
FASCISM/ANTIFASCISM
by Jean Barrot

This text is the first part of the introduction to a collection of
writings by Italian left communists on the Spanish Civil War published
as: "Bilan" - contre-rivolution en Espagne, ed. J. Barrot, UGE 10/18,
Paris, 1979. It was last published in pamphlet form by Pirate Press,
Black Star, P.O. Box 446, Sheffield, S1 1NY, UK.

Published on PC disc by Wildcat, August 1992

Our address is:   BM CAT, London WC1N 3XX, UK      (there is no need to
write anything else)



TOTALITARIANISM & FASCISM

The horrors of fascism were not the first of their kind, nor were they
the last. Nor were they the worst, no matter what anyone says. These
horrors were no worse than "normal" massacres due to wars, famines, etc.
For the proletarians, it was a more systematic version of the terrors
experienced in 1832, 1848, 1871, 1919 .... However, fascism occupies a
special place in the spectacle of horrors. This time around, indeed,
some capitalists and a good part of the political class were repressed,
along with the leadership and even the rank-and-file of the official
working class organizations. For the bourgeoisie and the petit
bourgeoisie, fascism was an abnormal phenomenon, a degradation of
democratic values explicable only by recourse to psychological
explanations. Liberal anti-fascism treated fascism as a perversion of
Western civilization, thereby generating an obverse effect: the
sado-masochistic fascination with fascism as manifested by the
collection of Nazi bric-a-brac. Western humanism never understood that
the swastikas worn by the Hell's Angels reflected the inverted image of
its own vision of fascism. The logic of this attitude can be summed up:
if fascism is the ultimate Evil, then let's choose evil, let's invert
all the values. This phenomenon is typical of a disoriented age.

The usual Marxist analysis certainly doesn't get bogged down in
psychology. The interpretation of fascism as an instrument of big
business has been classic since Daniel Guerin (2). But the seriousness
of his analysis conceals a central error. Most of the "marxist" studies
maintain the idea that, in spite of everything, fascism was avoidable in
1922 or 1933. Fascism is reduced to a weapon used by capitalism at a
certain moment. According to these studies capitalism would not have
turned to fascism if the workers' movement had exercised sufficient
pressure rather than displaying its sectarianism. Of course we wouldn't
have had a "revolution," but at least Europe would have been spared
Nazism, the camps, etc. Despite some very accurate observations on
social classes, the State, and the connection between fascism and big
business, this perspective succeeds in missing the point that fascism
was the product of a double failure; the defeat of the revolutionaries
who were crushed by the social democrats and their liberal allies;
followed by the failure of the liberals and social democrats to manage
Capital effectively. The nature of fascism and its rise to power remain
incomprehensible without studying the class struggles of the preceding
period and their limitations. One cannot be understood without the
other. It's  not by accident that Guerin is mistaken not only about the
significance of fascism, but also about the French Popular Front, which
he regards as a "missed revolution."

Paradoxically, the essence of antifascist mystification is that the
democrats conceal the nature of fascism as much as possible while they
display an apparent radicalism in denouncing it here, there, and
everywhere. This has been going on for fifty years now.

Boris Souvarine wrote in 1925 (3):
"Fascism here, fascism there. Action Frangaise - that's fascism. The
National Bloc - that's fascism.... Every day for the last six months,
Humaniti serves up a new fascist surprise. One day an enormous headline
six columns wide trumpets: SENATE FASCIST TO THE CORE. Another time, a
publisher refusing to print a communist newspaper is denounced: FASCIST
BLOW....
There exists today in France neither Bolshevism nor fascism, any more
than Kerenskyism. Liberti and Humaniti are blowing hot  air: the Fascism
they conjure up for us is not viable, the objective  conditions for its
existence are not yet realized....
One cannot leave the field free to reaction. But It is unnecessary to
baptise this reaction as fascism in order to fight it. "

In a time of verbal inflation, "fascism" is just a buzz word used by
leftists to demonstrate their radicalism. But its use indicates both a
confusion and a theoretical concession to the State and to Capital. The
essence of antifascism consists of struggling against fascism while
supporting democracy; in other words, of struggling not for the
destruction of capitalism, but to force capitalism to renounce its
totalitarian form. Socialism being identified with total democracy, and
capitalism with the growth of fascism, the opposition
proletariat/Capital, communism/wage labour, proletariat/State, is
shunted aside in favour Of the opposition "democracy"/"Fascism",
presented as the quintessence of the revolutionary perspective.
Antifascism succeeds only in mixing two phenomena: "Fascism" properly
so-called, and the evolution of Capital and the State towards
totalitarianism. In confusing these two phenomena, in substituting the
part for the whole, the cause of Fascism and totalitarianism is
mystified and one ends up reinforcing what one seeks to combat.

We cannot come to grips with the evolution Of capital and its
totalitarian forms by denouncing "latent Fascism", Fascism was a
particular episode in the evolution of Capital towards totalitarianism,
an evolution in which democracy has played and still plays a role as
counter-revolutionary as that of fascism, It is a misuse of language to
speak today of a non-violent, "friendly" fascism which would leave
intact the traditional organs of the workers' movement. Fascism was a
movement limited in tithe and space. The situation in Euro after 1918
gave it its original characteristics which will never recur.

Basically, fascism was associated with the economic and political
unification of Capital, a tendency which has become general since 1914.
Fascism was a particular way of realizing this goal in certain countries
- Italy and Germany - where the State proved itself incapable of
establishing order (as it is understood by the bourgeoisie), even though
the revolution had been crushed. Fascism has the following
characteristics: 1) it is born in the street; 2) it stirs up disorder
while preaching order; 3) it is a movement of obsolete middle classes
ending in their more or less violent destruction; and 4) it regenerates
from outside the traditional State which is incapable of resolving the
capitalist crisis.

Fascism was a solution to a crisis of the State during the transition to
the total domination of Capital over society. Workers' organizations of
a certain type were necessary in order to subdue the revolution; next
fascism was required in order to put an end to the subsequent disorder.
The crisis was never really overcome by fascism: the fascist State was
effective only in a superficial way, because it rested on the systematic
exclusion of the working class from social life . This crisis has been
more successfully overcome by the State in our own times. The democratic
State uses all the tools of fascism, in fact, more, because it
integrates the workers' organizations without annihilating them. Social
unification goes beyond that brought about by fascism, but fascism as a
specific movement has disappeared. It corresponded to the forced
discipline of the bourgeoisie under the pressure of the State in a truly
unique situation.

The bourgeoisie actually borrowed the name "fascism" from workers'
organizations in Italy which often called themselves "fasces". It's
significant that fascism defined itself first as a form of organisation
and not as a program. Its only program was to unite everyone into
fasces, to force together all the elements making up society:

"Fascism steals from the proletariat its secret: organization. ...
Liberalism is all ideology with no organization; fascism is all
organization with no ideology." (Bordiga)

Dictatorship is not a weapon of Capital, but rather a tendency of
Capital which materializes whenever necessary. To return to
parliamentary democracy after a period of dictatorship, as in Germany
after 1945, signifies only that dictatorship is useless (until the next
time) for integrating the masses into the State. We are not denying that
democracy assures a gentler exploitation than dictatorship: anyone would
rather be exploited like a Swede than like a Brazilian. But do we have a
CHOICE? Democracy will transform itself into dictatorship as soon as it
is necessary. The State can have only one function which it can fulfil
either democratically or dictatorially. One might prefer the first mode
to the second, but one cannot bend the State to force it to remain
democratic. The political forms which Capital gives itself do not depend
on the action of the working class any more than they depend on the
intentions of the bourgeoisie. The Weimar Republic capitulated before
Hitler, in fact it welcomed him with open arms. And the Popular Front in
France did not "prevent fascism" because France in 1936 did not need to
unify its Capital or reduce its middle classes. Such transformations do
not require any political choice on the part of the proletariat.

Hitler is disparaged for retaining from the Viennese social democracy of
his youth only its methods of propaganda. So what? The "essence" of
socialism was more to be found in these methods than In the
distinguished writings of Austro-Marxism. The common problem of social
democracy and Naziism was how to organise the masses and, if necessary,
repress them. It was the socialists and not the Nazis who crushed the
proletarian insurrections. (This does not inhibit the current SPD, in
power again as in 1919, from publishing a postage stamp in honour of
Rosa Luxemburg whom it had murdered in 1919.) The dictatorship always
comes after the proletarians have been defeated by democracy with the
help of the unions and the parties of the Left. On the other hand, both
socialism and Nazism have contributed to an improvement (temporary) in
the standard of living. Like the SPD, Hitler became the instrument of a
social movement the content of which escaped him. Like the SPD, he
fought for power, for the right to mediate between the workers and
Capital. And both Hitler and the SPD became the tools of Capital and
were discarded once their respective tasks had been accomplished.



ANTIFASCISM - THE WORST PRODUCT OF FASCISM

Since the fascism of the inter-war period, the term "fascism" has
remained in vogue. What political group has not accused its adversaries
of using "fascist methods"? The Left never stops denouncing resurgent
fascism, the Right does not refrain him labelling the PCF as the
"fascistic party." Signifying everything and anything, the word has lost
its meaning since international liberal opinion describes any strong
State as "fascist." Thus the illusions of the fascists of the thirties
are resurrected and presented as contemporary reality. Franco claimed to
be a fascist like his mentors, Hitler and Mussolini, but there was never
any fascist International.

If today the Greek colonels and Chilean generals ore called fascists by
the dominant ideology, they nevertheless represent variants of the
capitalist STATE. Applying the fascist label to the State is equivalent
to denouncing the parties at the head of that State. Thus one avoids the
critique of the State by denouncing those who direct it. The leftists
seek to authenticate their extremism with their hue and cry about
Fascism, while neglecting the critique of the State. In practice they
are proposing another form of the State (democratic or popular) in place
of the existing form.

The term "fascism " is still more irrelevant in the advanced capitalist
countries, where the Communist and Socialist parties will play a central
role in any future "fascist " State which is erected against a
revolutionary movement. In this case it is much more exact to speak of
the State pure and simple, and leave fascism out of it. Fascism
triumphed because its principles were generalized: the unification of
Capital and the efficient State. But in our times fascism has
disappeared as such, both as a political movement and as a form of the
State. In spite of some resemblances, the parties considered as fascist
since 1945 (in Fiance, for example, the RPF, poujadism, to some extent
today the RPR) have not aimed at conquering an impotent State from the
outside (4).

To insist on the recurring menace of fascism is to ignore the fact that
the real fascism was poorly suited to the task it took on and failed:
rather than strengthening German national Capital, Nazism ended by
dividing it in two. Today other forms of the State have come into being,
far removed from Fascism and from that democracy we hear constantly
eulogized.

With World War II, the mythology of Fascism was enriched by a new
element. This conflict was the necessary solution to problems both
economic (crash of 1929) and social (unruly working class which,
although non-revolutionary, had to be disciplined). World War II could
be depicted as a war against totalitarianism in the form of fascism.
This interpretation has endured, and the constant recall by the victors
of 1945 of the Nazi atrocities serves to justify the war by giving it
the character of a humanitarian crusade. Everything, even the atomic
bomb, could be justified against such a barbarous enemy. This
justification is, however, no more credible than the demagogy of the
Nazis, who claimed to struggle against capitalism and Western
plutocracy. The "democratic" forces included in their ranks a State as
totalitarian and bloody as Hitler's Germany: Stalin's Soviet Union, with
its penal code prescribing the death penalty from the age of twelve.
Everyone knows as well that the Allies resorted to similar methods of
terror and extermination whenever they saw the need (strategic bombing
etc.). The West waited until the Cold War to denounce the Soviet camps.
But each capitalist country has had to deal with its own specific
problems, Great Britain had no Algerian war to cope with, but the
partition of India claimed millions of victims. The USA never had to
organize concentration camps in order to silence its workers and dispose
of surplus petits bourgeois, but it found its own colonial war in
Vietnam. As for the Soviet Union, with its Gulag which is today
denounced the world over, it was content to concentrate into a few
decades the horrors spread out over several centuries in the older
capitalist countries, also resulting in millions of victims just in the
treatment of the Blacks alone. The development of Capital carries with
it certain consequences, of which the main ones are: 1) domination over
the working class, involving the destruction, gentle or otherwise, of
the revolutionary movement; 2) competition with other national Capitals,
resulting in war. When power is held by the "workers'" parties, only one
thing is altered: workerist demagogy will be more conspicuous, but the
workers will not be spared the most severe repression when this becomes
necessary. The triumph of Capital is never as total as when the workers
mobilize themselves on its behalf in search of a "better life".

In order to protect us from the excesses of Capital, antifascism as a
matter of course invokes the intervention of the State. Paradoxically,
antifascism becomes the champion of a strong State; For example, the PCF
asks us: "What kind of State is necessary in France today?... Is our
State stable and strong, as the President of the Republic claims? No, it
is weak, it is impotent to pull the country out of the social and
political crisis in which it is mired. In fact it is encouraging
disorder." (6)

Both dictatorship and democracy propose to strengthen the State the
former as a matter of principle, the latter in order to protect us -
ending up in the same result. Both are working towards the same goal -
totalitarianism. In both cases it is a matter of making everyone
participate in society: "from the top down" For the dictators, "from the
bottom up" for the democrats.

As regards dictatorship and democracy, can we speak of a struggle 
between two sociologically differentiated fractions of Capital? Rather
we are dealing with two different methods of regimenting the
proletariat, either by integrating it forcibly, or by bringing it
together through the mediation of its "own" organizations. Capital opts
for one or the other of these solutions according to the needs of the
moment. In Germany after 1918, social democracy and the unions were
indispensable for controlling the workers and isolating the
revolutionaries. On the other hand, after 1929, Germany had to
concentrate its industry, eliminate a section of the middle classes, and
discipline the bourgeoisie. The same traditional workers' movement,
defending political pluralism and the immediate interests of the
workers, had become an impediment to further development. The "workers'
organizations" supported capitalism faithfully, but had kept their
autonomy; as organizations they sought above all to perpetuate
themselves. This made them play an effective counter-revolutionary role
in 1918-1921, as the failure of the German revolution shows. In 1920 the
social democratic organizations provided the first example of
anti-revolutionary antifascism (before fascism existed in name).(7)
Subsequently the weight acquired by these organizations, both in society
and in the State itself, mode them play a role of social conservatism,
of economic Malthusianism. They had to be eliminated. They fulfilled an
anti-communist function in 1918-1921 because they were the expression of
the defense of wage labour as such; but this same rationale required
them to continue to represent the immediate interests of wage earners,
to the detriment of the re-organization of Capital as a whole.

One understands why Nazism had as its goal the violent destruction of
the workers' movement, contrary to the so-called fascist parties of
today. This is the crucial difference. Social democracy had done its job
of domesticating the workers well, too well. Social democracy had
occupied an important position in the State but was incapable of
unifying the whole of Germany behind it. This was the task of Nazism,
which knew how to appeal to all classes, from the unemployed to the
monopoly capitalists.

Similarly, the Unidad Popular in Chile was able to control the workers,
but without gathering the whole of the nation around it. Thus it became
necessary to overthrow it by force. On the contrary, there has not
(yet?) been any massive repression in Portugal since November 1975, and
if the current regime claims to be continuing the "revolution of the
officers," it is not because the power of the working class and
democratic organizations prevent a coup d'itat from the Right. Left wing
parties and unions have never prevented any such thing, except when the
coup d'itat was premature, e.g. the Kapp putsch in 1920. There is no
White terror in Portugal because it is unnecessary, the Socialist Party
up to the present time unifying the whole of society behind it.

Whether it admits it or not, antifascism has become the necessary form
of both working class and capitalist reformism. Antifascism unites the
two by claiming to represent the true ideal of the bourgeois revolution
betrayed by Capital. Democracy is conceived as an element of socialism,
an element already present in our society. Socialism is envisaged as
total democracy. The struggle for socialism would consist of winning
more and more democratic rights within the framework of capitalism. With
the help of the fascist scapegoat, democratic gradualism is revitalized.
Fascism and antifascism have the same origin and the same program, but
the former claimed to go beyond Capital and classes, while the latter
tries to attain the "true" bourgeois democracy which is endlessly
perfectible through the addition of stronger and stronger doses of
democracy. In reality, bourgeois democracy is a stage in the taking of
power by Capital, and its extension into the 20th century has resulted
in the increasing isolation of individuals. Born as the illusory
solution to the problem of the separation of human activity and society,
democracy will never be able to resolve the problem of the most
separated society in the whole of history. Antifascism will always end
in increasing totalitarianism; its fight for a "democratic" State will
end in strengthening the State.

For various reasons, the revolutionary analyses of fascism and
antifascism, and in particular the analysis of the Spanish Civil War
which is a more complex example, are ignored, misunderstood, or
regularly distorted. At best, they are considered as an idealist
perspective; at worst, as an indirect support of fascism. Note, they say
how the PCI helped Mussolini by refusing to take fascism seriously , and
especially by not allying itself with the democratic forces; or how the
KPD allowed Hitler to come to power while treating the SPD as the
principal enemy. In Spain, on the contrary, one has an example of
resolute antifascist struggle, which might have succeeded if it hadn't
been for the deficiencies of the Stalinists - socialists - anarchists
(cross out the appropriate names). These statements are based on a
distortion of the facts.


ITALY & GERMANY

In the forefront of the counter-truths, one finds a distorted account of
the case where at least an important section of the proletariat
struggled against fascism with its own methods and goals: Italy in
1918-1922. This struggle was not specifically antifascist: to struggle
against Capital meant to struggle against fascism as well as against
parliamentary democracy. This episode is significant because- the
movement in question was lead by communists, and not by reform
socialists who had joined the Comintern, e.g. the PCF, or by Stalinists
competing in nationalist demagoguery with the Nazis (like the KPD with
its talk of "national revolution" during the early thirties).
Perversely, the proletarian character of the struggle has allowed the
antifascists to reject everything revolutionary about the Italian
experience: the PCI, lead by Bordiga and the left communists at the
time, is charged with favouring the coming to power of Mussolini.
Without romanticizing this episode, it is worth studying because it
shows without the slightest ambiguity that the subsequent defeatism of
the revolutionaries regarding the war of "democracy " vs. "fascism "
(Spanish Civil War or World War II) is not an attitude of purists
insisting only on "the revolution" and refusing to budge until the Great
Day. This defeatism was based quite simply on the disappearance, during
the twenties and thirties, of the proletariat as a historical force,
following its defeat after it had partially constituted itself at the
end of World War I.

The fascist repression occurred only after the proletarian defeat. It
did not destroy the revolutionary forces which only the traditional
workers' movement could master by methods both direct and indirect. The
revolutionaries were defeated by democracy which did not shrink from
recourse to all the means available, including military action. Fascism
destroyed only lesser opponents, including the reformist workers'
movement which had become an impediment to further development. It is a
lie to depict the coming to power of Fascism as the result of street
fights in which the fascists defeated the workers.

In Italy, as in many other countries, 1919 was the decisive year, when
the proletarian struggle was defeated by the direct action of the State
as well as by electoral politics. Up to 1922, the State granted the
greatest freedom of action to the Fascists: lenience in judicial
proceedings, unilateral disarmament of the workers, occasional armed
support, not to mention the Bonomi memorandum of October 1921, which
sent 60,000 officers into the Fascist assault groups to act as leaders.
Before the armed fascist offensive, the State appealed... to the ballot
box. During the workshop occupations of 1920, the State refrained from
attacking the proletarians, allowing their struggle to exhaust itself
with the help of the CGL, which broke the strikes. As for the
"democrats", they did not hesitate to form a "national bloc" (liberals
and rightists) including fascists, for the elections of May 1921. During
June-July, 1921 , the PSI concluded a useless and phoney "peace pact"
with the fascists.

One can hardly speak of a coup d'itat in 1922: it was a transfer of
power. The "March on Rome" of Mussolini (who preferred to take the
train) was not a means of putting pressure on the legal government but
rather a publicity stunt. The ultimatum which he delivered to the
government on October 24 did not threaten civil war: it was a notice to
the capitalist State (and understood as such by the State) that
henceforth the PNF was the force most capable of assuring the unity of
the State. The State submitted very quickly. The martial law declared
after the failure of the attempt at compromise was cancelled by the
King, who then asked Mussolini to form the new government (which
included liberals). Every party except the PCI and PSI came to terms
with the PNF and voted for Mussolini in parliament. The power of the
dictator was ratified by democracy. The same scenario was reproduced in
Germany. Hitler was appointed chancellor by President Hindenburg
(elected in 1932 with the support of the socialists who saw in him... a
bulwark against Hitler), and the Nazis were a minority group in Hitler's
first cabinet. After some hesitation, Capital supported Hitler since it
saw in him the political force necessary to unify the State and hence
society. (That Capital did not foresee certain subsequent forms of the
Nazi State is a secondary matter.)

In both countries, the "workers' movement" was far from being vanquished
by fascism. Its organizations, totally independent of the proletarian
social movement, functioned only to preserve their institutional
existence and were ready to accept any political regime whatever, of the
Right or of the Left, which would tolerate them. The Spanish PSOE and
its labour federation (U.G.T.) collaborated between 1923 and 1930 with
the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. In 1932, the German socialist
unions, through the mouths of their leaders, declared themselves
independent of any political party and indifferent to the form of the
State, and tried to reach an understanding with Schleicher (Hitler's
unfortunate predecessor), then with Hitler, who convinced them that
National Socialism would permit their continued existence. After which
the German unionists disappeared behind the swastikas at the same time
that May 1 1933, was transformed into the "Festival of German Labour."
The Nazis proceeded to dispatch the union leaders into prisons and
camps, which had the effect of bestowing on the survivors the reputation
of being resolute "antifascists" from the first hour.

In Italy, the union leaders wanted to reach an agreement of mutual
tolerance with the fascists. They contacted the PNF late in 1922 and in
1923. Shortly before Mussolini took power, they declared:
  
"At this moment when political passions are exacerbated and two forces
alien to the union movement (the PCI and PNF) are bitterly vying for
power, the CGL feels its duty is to warn the workers about the
interventions of parties or political regroupments aiming to involve the
proletariat in a struggle from which it must remain absolutely aloof if
it does not want to compromise its independence."

On the other hand, there was in February, 1934, in Austria, armed
resistance by the left of the Social Democratic Party against the Forces
of a State which showed itself increasingly dictatorial and conciliatory
towards the Fascists. This struggle was not revolutionary in character,
but arose from the fact that there had been practically no street
battles in Austria after 1918. The most pugnacious proletarians
(although not communists) had not been beaten, and had remained within
social democracy which thus preserved some revolutionary tendencies. Of
course this resistance broke out spontaneously, and did not succeed in
coordinating itself.

The revolutionary critique of these events does not arrive at an "all or
nothing" conclusion, as if one insisted on fighting only for "the
revolution" and only at the side of the purest and toughest communists.
One must struggle, we are told, for reforms when it is not possible to
make the revolution; a well-led struggle for reforms prepares the way
for the revolution: who can do more, can do less; but who cannot do
less, cannot do more; who does not know how to defend himself, will not
know how to attack, etc. All these generalities are missing the point.
The polemic among Marxists, since the Second International, is not
concerned with the necessity or worthlessness of communist participation
in reformist struggles, which are in any case a reality. It is a matter
of knowing if a given struggle places the workers under the control
(direct or indirect) of Capital and in particular of its State, and what
position the revolutionaries must adopt in this case. For a
revolutionary, a "struggle" (a word leftists delight in) has no value in
itself; the most violent actions have often ended in constituting
parties and unions which have subsequently proved to be enemies of
communism. Any struggle, no matter how spontaneous in origin or how
energetic, which puts the workers under the dependence of the capitalist
State, can have only a counter-revolutionary function. The antifascist
struggle, which claims to search for a lesser evil (better to have
capitalist democracy than capitalist fascism), is like abandoning the
frying pan for the fire. Moreover, in placing oneself under the
direction of a State, one must accept all the consequences including the
repression which it will exercise, if required, against the workers and
revolutionaries who want to go beyond antifascism.

Rather than holding Bordiga and the PCI of 1921-1922 responsible for the
triumph of Mussolini, one would be better advised to question the
perpetual feebleness of antifascism, whose record is overwhelmingly
negative: when did antifascism ever prevent or even slow down
totalitarianism? World War II was supposed to safeguard the existence of
democratic States, but parliamentary democracies are today the
exception. In the so-called socialist countries, the disappearance of
the traditional bourgeoisie and the demands of State capitalism hove
resulted in dictatorships which are in no way preferable to those of the
former Axis countries. There are those who cherished illusions about
China, but little by little the information available confirms the
Marxist analyses already published(8) and reveals the existence of
camps, the reality of which is still denied by the Maoists... just as
the Stalinists have denied the existence of the Soviet camps for the
last 30 years. Africa, Asia, and Latin America live under one party
systems or military dictatorships. One is horrified by the Brazilian
tortures, but Mexican democracy did not shrink from firing on
demonstrators in 1968, killing 300. At least the defeat of the Axis
powers brought peace... but only for Europeans, not for the millions who
have died since in incessant wars and chronic famines. In short, the war
to end all wars and totalitarianism was a failure.

The reply of the antifascists is automatic: it's the fault of American
or Soviet imperialism, or both; in any case, say the most radical, it's
because of the survival of capitalism and its attendant misdeeds.
Agreed. But the problem remains. How could a war created by capitalist
States have any other effect than the strengthening of Capital?

The antifascists (especially the "revolutionaries") conclude exactly the
opposite, calling for a new surge of antifascism, which must continually
be radicalized so it progresses as far as possible. They never desist
from denouncing fascist "revivals" or "methods," but they never deduce
from this the necessity to destroy the root of the evil: Capital. Rather
they draw the reverse conclusion that it is necessary to return to "true
" antifascism, to proletarianize it, to recommence the work of Sisyphus
consisting of democratizing capitalism. Now one may hate fascism and
love humanitarianism, but nothing will change the crucial point: (1) The
capitalist State (and that means every State) is more and more
constrained to show itself as repressive and totalitarian; (2) all
attempts to exert pressure on them so as to bend them in a direction
more favourable to the workers or to "freedoms," will end at best in
nothing, at worst (usually the case) by reinforcing the widespread
illusion that the State is an arbiter over society, a more or less
neutral force which is above classes. Leftists are quite capable of
endlessly repeating the classic Marxist analysis of the State as an
instrument of class domination and at the same time proposing to "use"
this same State. Similarly, leftists will study Marx's writings on the
abolition of wage labour and exchange, and then turn around and depict
the revolution as an ultra-democratization of wage labour.

There are those who go further. They adopt part of the revolutionary
thesis in announcing that since Capital is synonymous with "fascism" the
struggle for democracy against fascism implies the struggle against
Capital itself. But on what terrain do they fight? To fight under the
leadership of one or more capitalist States - because they have and
retain control of the struggle - is to ensure defeat in the struggle
against Capital. The struggle for democracy is not a short cut allowing
the workers to make the revolution without realizing it. The proletariat
will destroy totalitarianism only by destroying democracy and all
political forms at the same time. Until then there will be a succession
of "fascist" and "democratic" systems in time and in space; dictatorial
regimes transforming themselves willy nilly into democratic regimes and
vice versa; dictatorships coexisting with democracies, the one type
serving as a contrast and self-justification for the other type.

Thus it is absurd to say that democracy furnishes a social system more
favourable than dictatorship to revolutionary activity, since the former
turns immediately to dictatorial means when menaced by revolution; all
the more so when the "workers' parties" are in power. If one wished to
pursue antifascism to its logical conclusion, one would have to imitate
certain left liberals who tell us: since the revolutionary movement
pushes Capital towards dictatorship, let us renounce all revolution and
content ourselves with going as far as possible along the path of
reforms long as we don't frighten Capital. But this prudence is itself
utopian, because the "fascistization " it tries to avoid is a product
not only of revolutionary action, but of capitalist concentration. We
can argue about the timing and the practical results of the
participation of revolutionaries in democratic movements up to the
beginning of the 20th century, but this option is excluded once Capital
achieves total domination over society, for then only one type of
politics is possible: democracy becomes a mystification and a trap for
the unwary. Every time the proletarians depend on democracy as a weapon
against Capital, it escapes from their control or is transformed into
its opposite .... Revolutionaries reject antifascism because one cannot
fight exclusively against ONE political form without supporting the
others, which is what antifascism is about strictly speaking, the error
of antifascism is not in struggling against fascism but in giving
precedence to this struggle, which renders it ineffective. The
revolutionaries do not denounce antifascism for not "making the
revolution," but for being powerless to stop totalitarianism, and for
reinforcing, voluntarily or not, Capital and the State.

Not only does democracy always surrender itself to fascism, practically
without a fight, but fascism also re-generates democracy from itself as
required by the state of socio-political forces. For example, in 1943,
Italy was obliged to join the camp of the victors, and thus its leader,
the "dictator" Mussolini, found himself in a minority on the Fascist
Grand Council and submitted to the democratic verdict of this organ. One
of the top Fascist officials, Marshal Badoglio, summoned the democratic
opposition and formed a coalition government. Mussolini was arrested.
This is known in Italy as the "revolution of August 25, 1943." The
democrats hesitated, but pressure from the Russians and the PCI forced
them to accept a government of national unity in April, 1944, directed
by Badoglio, to which Togliatti and Benedetto Croce belonged. In June,
1944, the socialist Bonomi formed a ministry which excluded the
fascists. This established the tripartite formula (PCI - PSI - Christian
Democracy) which dominated the first years of the post-war period. Thus
we see a transition desired and partly orchestrated by the fascists. In
the same way as democracy understood in 1922 that the best means of
preserving the State was to entrust it to the dictatorship of the
fascist party, so it was that fascism in 1943 understood that the only
way of protecting the integrity of the nation and the continuity of the
State was to return the latter to the control of the democratic parties.
Democracy metamorphoses itself into fascism, and vice versa, according
to the circumstances: what is involved is a succession or combination of
political forms assuring the preservation of the State as the guarantor
of capitalism. Let us note that the "return" to democracy is far from
producing in itself a renewal of class struggle. In fact the workers'
parties coming to power are the first to fight in the name of national
Capital. Thus the material sacrifices and the renunciation of class
struggle, justified by the necessity of "defeating Fascism first," were
imposed after the defeat of the Axis, always in the name of the ideal of
the Resistance. The fascist and antifascist ideologies are each
adaptable to the momentary and fundamental interests of Capital,
according to the circumstances.

>From the beginning, whenever the cry goes up "fascism will not pass "-
not only does it always pass, but in such a grotesque manner that the
demarcation between fascism and non-fascism follows a line in constant
motion, For example, the French Left denounced the "Fascist" danger
after May 13, 1958, but the secretary-general of the SFIO collaborated
in writing the constitution of the Fifth Republic.

Portugal and Greece have offered new examples of the auto-
transformation of dictatorships into democracies. Under the shock of
external circumstances (colonial question for Portugal, Cyprus conflict
for Greece), a section of the military preferred to dump the regime in
order to save the State; the democrats reason and act exactly the same
when the "fascists" bid for power. The current Spanish Communist Party
expresses precisely this View (it remains to be seen whether Spanish
Capital wants and needs the PCE):

"Spanish society desires that everything be transformed in such a way
that the normal functioning of the State is assured, without jolts or
social convulsions. The continuity of the State demands the
non-continuity of the regime. "

There is a transition from one form to the other, a transition from
which the proletariat is excluded and over which it exercises no
control. If the proletariat tries to intervene, it ends up integrated
into the State and its subsequent struggles are all the more difficult,
as the Portuguese case clearly demonstrates.


CHILE

It is probably the example of Chile which has done the most to
revitalize the false opposition democracy /fascism. This case
illustrates all too well the mechanism of the triumph of dictatorship,
involving in this instance the triple defeat of the proletariat.

Contemporary to the events in Europe, the Chilean Popular Front of the
thirties had already designated its enemy as the "oligarchy." The
struggle against oligarchic control of the legislature, presented as a
stifling of the most conservative forces, facilitated the evolution
towards a more centralized, presidential system with reinforced State
power, capable of pushing reforms, i,e, industrial development. This
Popular Front (which lasted essentially from 1936 to 1940) corresponded
to the conjuncture of the rise of the urban middle classes (bourgeoisie
and white collar workers) and working class struggles. The working class
was organized by the socialist labour federation (decimated by
repression); by the anarcho-syndicalist CGT, influenced by the I. W. W,
and rather weak (20 to 30 thousand members out of a total of 200,000
unionized); and especially by the federation under Communist Party
influence, The unions of white collar workers had carried on strikes in
the twenties as fierce as those of the industrial workers excepting
those two bastions of working class militancy: the nitrate (later
copper) and coal industries. Although insisting on agrarian reform  the
socialist-Stalinist-Radical coalition did not succeed in imposing it on
the oligarchy. The coalition didn't do much to recover the wealth lost
to foreign exploitation of natural resources (primarily nitrate)  but
engineered a jump in industrial production such as Chile has never known
before or since. By means of institutions similar to those of the New
Deal the State secured the major portion of investments and introduced a
State capitalist structure  concentrating on heavy industry and energy.
Industrial production increased during this period by 10% per annum;
from this period to 1960, by 4% per annum; and during the sixties  by 1
to 2% per annum. A re-unification of the socialist and Stalinist labour
federations took place at the end of 1936 and weakened still more the
CGT; the Popular Front wiped out anything truly subversive. As a
coalition this regime lasted until 1940 when the Socialist party
withdrew. But the regime was able to continue until 1947  backed by
Radicals and the Communist Party as well as the intermittent support of
the fascist Phalange (rightist ancestor of Chilean Christian Democracy
and the party of origin of Christian Democrat leader Eduardo Frei (9)) .
The Communist Party supported the regime until 1947 when it was outlawed
by the Radicals.

As the leftists always tell us Popular Fronts are also products of
working class struggle, but of a struggle which remains within the
framework of capitalism and pushes Capital to modernize itself. After
1970, the Unidad Popular gave itself as a goal the revitalizing of
Chilean national Capital (which the PDC had not known how to protect
during the sixties), while integrating the workers. In the end the
Chilean proletariat was defeated three times over. Firstly by dropping
their economic struggles to array themselves under the banner of the
forces of the Left, accepting the new State because it was supported by
the "workers'" organisations. Allende responded in 1971 to this
question;

"Do you think it possible to avoid the dictatorship of the proletariat ?
"   "I think so: it is to this end that we are working." (10)

Secondly, in suffering repression at the hands of the military after the
coup d'itat, contrary to what the leftist press said about "armed
resistance." The proletarians had been disarmed materially' and
ideologically by the government of Allende, The latter had forced the
workers to surrender their arms on numerous occasions. It had itself
initiated the transition towards a military government by appointing a
general as Minister of the Interior. In placing themselves under the
protection of the democratic State, which was congenitally incapable of
avoiding totalitarianism (because the State is above all For the State
democratic or dictatorial - before it is for either democracy or
dictatorship), the proletarians condemned themselves in advance to
paralysis in the face of a coup from the Right. An important accord
between the UP and the PDC affirmed:

"We desire that the police and the armed forces continue to guarantee
our democratic order, which implies the respect of the organized and
hierarchical structure of the army and the police."

However the most ignoble defeat of all was the third, Here one must
bestow on the international extreme Left the medal which it deserves.
After having supported the capitalist State in order to push it further,
the Left and the extreme Left posed as prophets: "We warned you: the
State is the repressive force of Capital." The same ones who six months
earlier had stressed the entry of radical elements into the army or the
infiltration of revolutionaries into the whole of political and social
life, now repeated that the army had remained "the army of the
bourgeoisie," and that they had known it all along...

Evidently searching first to justify their inextricable failure, they
made use of the emotion and shock caused by the coup d'itat in order to
stifle the attempt by some proletarians (in Chile and elsewhere) to draw
lessons from these events. Instead of showing what the UP did and what
it could not do, these leftists revived the same old politics, giving it
a left wing tinge. The photo of Allende grasping an automatic weapon
during the coup became the symbol of left wing democracy, finally
resolved to fight effectively against fascism. The ballot is OK , but
it's not enough: guns are also necessary- that's the lesson the Left
draws from Chile, The death of Allende himself, sufficient "physical"
proof of the failure of democracy, is disguised as proof of his will to
struggle.

"Now, if in the performance their interests prove to be uninteresting
and their potency impotence, then either the fault lies with pernicious
sophists, who split the indivisible people into different hostile camps,
or the army was too brutalized and blinded to comprehend that the pure
aims of democracy are the best thing for it itself. ... In any case, the
democrat comes out of the most disgraceful defeat just as immaculate as
he was innocent when he went into it. " (Marx) (11)

As for inquiring into the nature of the UP, into the content of this
famous struggle (by ballots one day, by bullets the next), in short,
into the nature of capitalism, communism, and the State, well that is
another matter, a luxury one cannot afford when "Fascism attacks," One
could also ask why the industrial "cordons" scarcely budged. But now is
a time for pulling together: defeat brings the antifascists together
even more surely than victory. Conversely, regarding the Portuguese
situation, one must avoid all criticism under the pretext of not doing
anything to hinder the "movement". In fact one of the first declarations
of the Portuguese Trotskyists after April 25, 1974, was to denounce the
"ultra-leftists" who did not want to play the game of democracy.

In short, the international extreme Left was united in obstructing the
decipherment of the Chilean events, in order to detach the proletarians
still further from the communist perspective. In this way the Left is
preparing the return of Chilean democracy on the day when Capital has
need of it again.


PORTUGAL

Although it remains susceptible to new developments, the Portuguese case
presents an insoluble riddle only to those (the most numerous) who don't
know what a revolution is. Even sincere but confused revolutionaries
remain perplexed before the collapse of a movement which appeared to
them so substantial a few months earlier. This incomprehension rests on
a confusion. Portugal illustrates what the proletariat is capable of
doing, demonstrating once again that Capital must take account of it.
Proletarian action may not be the motor of history, but on the political
and social plane it constitutes the keystone of the evolution of any
modern capitalist country. However, this irruption on the historical
scene is not automatically synonymous with revolutionary progress. To
mix the two theoretically is to confuse the revolution with its
opposite. To speak of the Portuguese revolution is to confuse revolution
with a re-organization of Capital. As long as the proletariat remains
within the economic and political limits of capitalism, not only does
the basis of society remain unchanged, but even the reforms obtained
(political liberties and economic demands) are doomed to an ephemeral
existence. Whatever Capital concedes under pressure from the working
class con be taken back; in whole or in part, as soon as that pressure
is relaxed: any movement condemns itself if it is limited to a pressure
on capitalism. So long as proletarians act in this way, they are just
banging their heads against the wall.

The Portuguese dictatorship had ceased to be the form adequate for the
development of a national Capital, as evidenced by its incapacity to
settle the colonial question. far from enriching the metropolis, the
colonies destabilized it. Fortunately, ready to fight  "fascism", there
was... the army. The sole organized force in the country, only the army
could initiate change; as for carrying it through successfully, that's
another matter. Acting according to habit, blinded by their role and
their claims to power within the framework of Capital, the Left and the
extreme Left detected a profound subversion of the army. Whereas
previously they had seen the officers only as colonial torturers, now
they discovered a People's Army. With the aid of sociology, they
demonstrated the popular origins and aspirations of the military leaders
which allegedly inclined them towards socialism. It remained to
cultivate the good intentions of these officers, who, we were told,
asked only to be enlightened by the "'Marxists". From the PS to the most
extreme leftists, the whole world conspired to conceal the simple fact
that the capitalist State had not disappeared, and that the army
remained its essential instrument.

Because some slots in the State apparatus were made available to working
class militants, we were told the State had changed its function.
Because it expressed itself in populist language, the army was
considered to be on the side of the workers. Because relative freedom of
speech prevailed, "workers' democracy " (foundation of socialism, as
everyone knows) was judged to be well established. Certainly there were
a series of warning signals and renewals of authority where the State
exhibited its old self. There again, the Left and the extreme Left drew
the conclusion that it was necessary to exert still more pressure on the
State, but without attacking it, out of fear of playing into the hands
of the "Right". However, they fulfilled precisely the program of the
Right and in doing so added something of which the Right is generally
incapable: the integration of the masses. The opening up of the State to
influences "from the Left" does not signify its withering away, but
rather its strengthening. The Left placed a popular ideology and the
enthusiasm of the workers in the service of the construction of
Portuguese national capitalism.

The alliance between the Left and the army was a precarious one. The
Left brought the masses, the army the stability guaranteed by the threat
of its weapons. It was necessary for the PCP and PS to control the
masses carefully. In order to do so, they had to grant material
advantages which were dangerous for a weak capitalism. Hence the
contradictions and successive political rearrangements. The "workers'"
organizations are capable of dominating the workers, not of delivering
to Capital the profits it requires. Thus it was necessary to resolve the
contradiction and re-establish discipline. The alleged revolution had
served to exhaust the most resolute, to discourage the others, and to
isolate, indeed, repress, the revolutionaries. Next the State intervened
brutally , demonstrating convincingly that it had never disappeared.
Those who attempted to conquer the State from within succeeded only in
sustaining it at a critical moment. A revolutionary movement is not
possible in Portugal, but is dependent on a wider context, and in any
case will be possible only on other bases than the capitalist-democratic
movement of April, 1974.

The workers' struggle, even for reformist goals, creates difficulties
for Capital and moreover constitutes the necessary experience for the
proletariat to prepare itself for revolution. The struggle prepares the
future: but this preparation can lead in two directions-nothing is
automatic - it can just as easily stifle as strengthen the communist
movement. Under these conditions it's not sufficient to insist on the
"autonomy" of the workers' actions. Autonomy is no more a revolutionary
principle than "planning" by a minority. The revolution no more insists
on democracy than on dictatorship.

Only by carrying out certain measures can the proletarians retain
control of the struggle. If they limit themselves to reformist action,
sooner or later the struggle will escape from their control and be taken 
over by a specialized organ of the syndical type, which may call itself
a union or a "committee of the base". Autonomy is not a revolutionary
virtue in itself. Any form of organization depends on the content of the
goal for which it was created. The emphasis cannot be put on the
self-activity of the workers, but on the communist perspective, the
realization of which alone effectively allows working class action to
avoid falling under the leadership of traditional parties and unions.
The content of the action is the determining criterion: the revolution
is not just a matter of what the "majority" wants. To give priority to
workers' autonomy leads to a dead end.

Workerism is sometimes a healthy response, but is inevitably
catastrophic when it becomes an end in itself. Workerism tends to
conjure away the decisive tasks of the revolution. In the name of
workers' "democracy" it confines the proletarians to the capitalist
enterprise with its problems of production (not visualizing the
revolution as the destruction of the enterprise as such). And workerism
mystifies the problem of the State. At best, it re-invents
"revolutionary syndicalism."


SPAIN: WAR OR REVOLUTION?

Everywhere democracy was capitulating before dictatorship. More
correctly, it was welcoming dictatorship with open arms. And Spain? Far
from constituting the happy exception, Spain represented the extreme
case of armed confrontation between democracy and fascism without
changing the nature of the struggle: it is always two forms of
capitalist development which are in opposition, two political forms of
the capitalist State, two statist systems quarrelling over the
legitimacy of the legal and normal capitalist State in a country.
Moreover the confrontation was violent only because the workers had
arrayed themselves against fascism. The complexity of the war in Spain
comes from this double aspect; a civil war (proletariat vs. capital)
transforming itself into a capitalist war (the proletarians supporting
in both camps rival capitalist State structures).

After having given every facility to the "rebels" to prepare themselves,
the Republic was going to negotiate and/or submit, when the proletarians
rose up against the fascist coup d'itat, preventing its success in half
of the country. The Spanish War would not have been unleashed without
this authentic proletarian insurrection (it was more than a spontaneous
outbreak). But this alone does not suffice to characterize the whole
Spanish War and subsequent events. It defines only the first moment of
the struggle, which was effectively a proletarian uprising. After having
defeated the fascists in a large number of cities, the workers held
power. Such was the situation immediately after their insurrection. But
what did they proceed to do with this power? Did they hand it back to
the republican State, or did they use it to go further in the direction
of communism? They put their trust in the legal government, i.e. in the
existing, capitalist State. All their subsequent actions were carried
out under the direction of this State . This is the central point. It
followed that in its armed struggle against Franco and in its
socio-economic transformations, the whole movement of the Spanish
proletarians was placing itself squarely within the framework of the
capitalist State and could only be capitalist in nature. It's true
attempts to go further took place in the social sphere (we shall speak
further of this); but these attempts remained hypothetical so long as
the capitalist State was maintained. The destruction of the State is the
necessary (but not sufficient) condition for communist revolution. In
Spain, real power was exercised by the State and not by organizations,
unions, collectives, committees, etc. The proof of this is that the
mighty CNT had to submit to the PCE (very weak prior to July, 1936) .
One can verify this by the simple fact that the State was able to use
its power brutally when required (May, 1937). There is no revolution
without the destruction of the State. This "obvious" Marxist truth,
forgotten by 99% of the "Marxists" emerges once more from the Spanish
tragedy.

"It is one of the peculiarities of revolutions that just as the people
seem about to take a great start and to open a new era, they suffer
themselves to be ruled by the delusions of the past and surrender all
the power and influence they have so dearly won into the hands of men
who represent, or are supposed to represent, the popular movement of a
by-gone epoch." (Marx) (12)

We cannot compare the armed workers "columns" of the second half of 1936
with their subsequent militarization and reduction to the level of
organs of the bourgeois army. A considerable difference separated these
two phases, but not in the sense that a non-revolutionary phase followed
a revolutionary phase: first there was a phase of stifling the
revolutionary awakening, during which the workers' movement presented a
certain autonomy, a certain enthusiasm, indeed, a communist demeanour
well described by Orwell (13). Then this phase, superficially
revolutionary but in fact creating the conditions for a classic
anti-proletarian war, gave way naturally to what it had prepared.

The columns left Barcelona to fight fascism in other cities, principally
Saragossa. Supposing they were attempting to spread the revolution
beyond the Republican zones, it would have been necessary to
revolutionize those Republican zones, either previously or
simultaneously. (14) Durruti knew the State had not been destroyed, but
he ignored this fact. On the march his column, composed of 70%
anarchists, pushed for collectivization. The militia helped the peasants
and taught them revolutionary ideas. But "we have only one purpose: to
destroy the fascists". Durruti put it well: "our militia will never
defend the bourgeoisie, they just do not attack it". A fortnight before
his death (November 21, 1936), Durruti stated:

"A single thought, a single objective... : destroy fascism.... At the
present time no one is concerned about increasing wages or reducing
hours of work... to sacrifice oneself, to work as much as required... we
must form a solid block of granite. The moment has arrived for the
unions and political organizations to finish with the enemy once and for
all. Behind the front, administrative skills are necessary.... After
this war is over, let's not provoke , through our incompetence, another
civil war among ourselves.... To oppose fascist tyranny, we must present
a single force: there must exist only a single organization, with a
single discipline."

The will to struggle can never serve as a substitute for a revolutionary
struggle. furthermore, political violence is easily adapted to
capitalist purposes (as recent terrorism proves). The fascination of
"armed struggle" quickly backfires on the proletarians as soon as they
direct their blows exclusively against a particular form of the state
rather than the State itself.

Under different conditions the military evolution of the antifascist
camp (insurrection, followed by militias, finally a regular army)
recalls the anti-Napoleonic guerilla war described by Marx:

"By comparing the three periods of guerilla warfare with the political
history of Spain, it is found that they represent the respective degrees
into which the counter-revolutionary spirit of the Government had
succeeded in cooling the spirit of the people. Beginning with the rise
of whole populations, the partisan war was next carried on by guerilla
bands, of which whole districts formed the reserve and terminated in
corps francs continually on the point of dwindling into banditti, or
sinking down to the level of standing regiments". (15)

The conditions cannot be juxtaposed, but in 1936 as in 1808, the
military evolution cannot be explained solely by "technical"
considerations related to military art: one must also consider the
relation of the political and social forces and its modification in an
anti-revolutionary sense. Let us note that the "columns" of 1936 did not
even succeed in waging a war of franc-tireurs [irregulars] and stalled
before Saragossa. The compromise evoked by Durruti above - the necessity
of unity at any price - could only give victory to the Republican State
first (over the proletariat) and to Franco next (over the Republican
State ).

There was certainly the start of a revolution in Spain, but it failed as
soon as the proletarians put their faith in the existing State. It
scarcely matters what their intentions were. Even though the great
majority of proletarians who were ready to struggle against Franco under
the leadership of the State might have preferred to hang on to real
power in spite of everything, and supported the State only as a matter
of convenience, the determining factor is their act and not their
intention. After organizing themselves to defeat the coup d'itat, after
giving themselves the rudiments of an autonomous military structure (the
militias), the workers agreed to place themselves under the direction of
a coalition of "workers' organizations" (for the most part openly
counter-revolutionary) which accepted the authority of the legal State.
It is certain that at least some of the proletarians hoped to retain
real power (which they had effectively conquered, though only for a
short time), while leaving to the official  State only the semblance of
power. This was truly an error, for which they paid dearly.

Some critics of the preceding analysis agree with our account of the
Spanish war but insist that the situation remained "open" and could have
evolved. It was therefore necessary to support the autonomous movement
of the Spanish proletarians (at least until May, 1937) even if this
movement had given itself forms quite inadequate to the true situation.
A movement was evolving, and it was necessary to contribute to its
ripening. To which the reply is that, on the contrary, the autonomous
movement of the proletariat quickly vanished as it was absorbed into the
structure of the State, which was not slow to stifle any radical
tendency. This was apparent to all by mid-1937, but the "bloody days of
Barcelona" served only to unmask the reality which had existed since the
end of July, 1936: effective power had passed out of the hands of the
workers to the capitalist State. Let us add for those who equate fascism
and bourgeois dictatorship that the Republican government made use of
"fascist methods" against the workers. Certainly the number of victims
was much less in comparison to the repression of Franco, but this is
connected with the different function of the two repressions, democratic
and fascist. An elementary division of labour: the target group of the
Republican government was much smaller (uncontrollable elements, POUM,
left of the CNT).


OCTOBER 1917 & JULY 1936

It's obvious that a revolution doesn't develop in a day. There is always
a confused and multiform movement. The whole problem is the ability of
the revolutionary movement to act in an increasingly  clear way and to
go forward irreversibly. The comparison, often badly made, between
Russia and Spain shows this well. Between February and October, 1917,
the soviets constituted a power parallel to that of the State. For quite
some time they supported the legal State and thus did not act at all in
a revolutionary manner. One could even say the soviets were
counter-revolutionary. But this does not imply that they were fixed in
their ways - in fact they were the site of a long and bitter struggle
between the revolutionary current  (represented especially, but not
solely, by the Bolsheviks), and the various conciliators. It was only at
the conclusion of this struggle that the soviets took up a position in
opposition to the State. (16) It would have been absurd for a communist
to say in February, 1917: these soviets are not acting in a
revolutionary manner, I shall denounce them and fight them. Because the
soviets were not stabilized then. The conflict which animated the
soviets over a period of months was not a struggle of ideas, but the
reflection of an antagonism of genuine interests.

"It will be the interests - and not the principles - which will set the
revolution in motion. In fact it is precisely from the interests, and
from them alone, that the principles develop; which is to say that the
revolution will not be merely political, but social as well." (Marx)
(17)

The Russian workers and peasants wanted peace, land, and democratic
reforms which the government would not grant. This antagonism explains
the growing hostility, leading to confrontation, which divided the
government from the masses. Moreover, earlier class struggles had led to
the formation of a revolutionary minority knowing more or less (cf. the
vacillations of the Bolshevik leadership after February) what it wanted,
and which organized itself for these ends, taking up the demands of the
mosses to use them against the government. In April 1917, Lenin said:

"To speak of civil war before people have come to realize the need for
it is undoubtedly to lapse into Blanquism.... it is the soldiers and not
the capitalists who now have the guns and rifles; the capitalists are
getting what they want now not by force but by deception, and to shout
about violence now is senseless.... For the time being we withdraw that
slogan, but only for the time being."(18) As soon as the majority in the
soviets shifted (in September), Lenin called for the armed seizure of
power....

No such events happened in Spain. In spite of their frequency and
violence, the series of confrontations which took place after World War
I did not serve to unify the proletarians as a class. Restricted to
violent struggle because of the repression of the reformist movement,
they fought incessantly, but did not succeed in concentrating their
blows against the enemy. In this sense there was no revolutionary
"party" in Spain. Not because a revolutionary minority did not succeed
in organizing itself: this would be looking at the problem the wrong way
around. Rather because the struggles, virulent though they were, did not
result in a clear class opposition between proletariat and Capital. To
speak of a "party" makes sense only if we understand it as the
organization of the communist movement. But this movement was always too
weak, too dispersed (not geographically, but in the degree to which it
scattered its blows); it did not attack the heart of the enemy; it did
not free itself from the guardianship of the CNT, an organization
basically reformist as all syndical organizations are condemned to
become, despite the pressure of radical militants; in brief, this
movement did not organize itself in a communist fashion because it did
not act in a communist fashion. The Spanish example demonstrates that
the intensity of the class struggle - indisputable in Spain - does not
automatically induce communist action, and thus the revolutionary party
to keep the action going. The Spanish proletarians were never reluctant
to sacrifice their lives (sometimes to no purpose), but never surmounted
the barrier which separated them from an attack against Capital (the
State, the commercial economic system). They took up arms, they took
spontaneous initiatives (libertarian communes before 1936,
collectivizations after), but did not go further. Very quickly they
yielded control over the militias to the Central Committee of the
Militias. Neither this organ, nor any other organ which emerged in this
fashion in Spain, can be compared to the Russian soviets. The "ambiguous
position of the CC of the Militias," simultaneously an "important
appendage of the Generalidad " (Catalan government) and "a sort of
coordinating committee for the various antifascist military
organizations," implied its integration into the State, because it was
vulnerable to those organizations which were disputing over (capitalist)
State power. (19)

In Russia there was a struggle between a radical minority which was
organized and capable of formulating the revolutionary perspective, and
the majority in the soviets. In Spain, the radical elements, whatever
they may have believed, accepted the position of the majority: Durruti
sallied forth to struggle against Franco, leaving the State intact
behind him. When the radicals did oppose the State, they did not seek to
destroy the "workers'" organizations which were "betraying" them
(including the CNT and the POUM). The essential difference, the reason
why there was no "Spanish October" was the absence in Spain of a true
contradiction of interests between the proletarians and the State.
"Objectively", proletariat and Capital are in opposition, but this
opposition exists at the level of principles, which doesn't coincide
here with reality. In its effective social movement, the Spanish
proletariat was not compelled to confront, as a block, Capital and the
State. In Spain there were no burning demands, demands felt to be
absolutely necessary, which could force the workers to attack the State
in order to obtain them (as in Russia where one had peace, land, etc.).
This non-antagonistic situation was connected with the absence of a
"party," an absence which weighed heavily on events, preventing the
antagonism from ripening and bursting later. Compared to the instability
in Russia between February and October, Spain presented itself as a
situation on the road to normalization from the beginning of August,
1936. If the army of the Russian State disintegrated after February,
1917, that of the Spanish State recomposed itself after July, 1936,
although in a new, "popular" form.


THE PARIS COMMUNE

One comparison (among others) demands attention and compels us to
criticize the usual Marxist view, which happens to be that of Marx
himself. After the Paris Commune, Marx drew his famous lesson: "the
working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery,
and wield it for its own purposes."(20) But Marx failed to establish
clearly the distinction between the insurrectional movement dating from
March 18, 1871, and its later transformation, finalized by the election
of the "Commune" on March 26. The formula "Paris Commune" includes both
and conceals the evolution. The initial movement was certainly
revolutionary, in spite of its confusion, and extended the social
struggles of the Empire. But this movement was willing next to give
itself a political structure and a capitalist social content. In effect
the elected Commune changed only the exterior forms of bourgeois
democracy. If the bureaucracy and the permanent army had become
characteristic features of the capitalist State, they still did not
constitute its essence. Marx observed that:

"The Commune made that catchword of bourgeois revolutions, cheap
government, a reality, destroying the two greatest sources of
expenditure: the permanent army and the State bureaucracy." (21)

As is well known, the elected Commune was largely dominated by bourgeois
republicans. The communists, cautious and few in number, had formerly
been obliged to express themselves in the republican press, so weak was
their own organization, and did not carry much weight in the life of the
elected Commune, As for the program of the Commune - this is the
decisive criterion - we know it prefigured uniquely that of the Third
Republic. Even without any Machiavellianism on the part of the
bourgeoisie, the war of Paris against Versailles (very badly executed,
and not by chance) served to drain the revolutionary content and direct
the initial movement towards purely military activity. It is curious to
note that Marx defined the governmental form of the Commune above all by
its mode of operation, rather than what it effectively did. It was
indeed "the true representation of all the healthy elements of French
society, and therefore the true national government" - but a capitalist
government, and not at all a "workers' government".(22) We shall not be
able to study here why Marx adopted such a contradictory position (at
least in public, for the First International, because he showed himself
more critical in private).(23) In any case, the mechanism for stifling
the revolutionary movement resembled that of 1936. As in 1871, the
Spanish Republic used as cannon fodder the Spanish and foreign radical
elements (naturally those most inclined to destroy fascism) without
fighting seriously itself, without using all the resources at its
disposal. In the absence of a class analysis of this power (as in the
example of 1871), these facts appear as "errors," indeed "treasons," but
never in their own logic.


MEXICO

Another parallel is possible. During the Mexican bourgeois revolution,
the major portion of the organized working class was for a time
associated with the democratic and progressive State in order to push
the bourgeoisie forward and assure its own interests as wage earners
within Capital. The "red battalions" of 1915-1916 represented the
military alliance between the union movement and the State, headed at
the time by Carranza. Founded in 1912, the Casa del Obrero Mundial
decided to "suspend the professional union organization" and struggle
alongside the Republican State against "the bourgeoisie and its
immediate allies, the military professionals and the clergy". A section
of the workers' movement refused and violently opposed the COM and its
ally, the State. The COM "tried to unionize all types of workers in the
constitutionalist zones with the backing of the army." The red
battalions fought simultaneously against the other political forces
aspiring to control the capitalist State ("reactionaries") and against
the rebel peasants and radical workers.(24)

It is curious to note that these battalions organized themselves
according to occupation or trade (typographers, railway workers, etc.).
In the Spanish war, some of the militias also carried the names of
trades. Similarly, in 1832, the Lyon insurrection saw the textile
workers organized into groups according to the hierarchy of labour: the
workers were mustered into workshop groups commanded by foremen. By such
means the wage-earners rose up in arms as wage earners to defend the
existing system of labour against the "encroachments" (Marx) of Capital.
A difference in kind separates the revolt of 1832, directed against the
State, from the Mexican and Spanish examples where the organized workers
supported the State. But the point is to understand the persistence of
working class struggle on the basis of the organization of labour as
such. Whether it integrates itself or not into the State, such a
struggle is doomed to failure, either by absorbtion into the State or by
repression under it. The communist movement can conquer only if the
proletarians go beyond the elementary uprising (even armed) which does
not attack wage labour itself. The wage earners can only lead the armed
struggle by destroying themselves as wage earners.


IMPERIALIST WAR

In order to have a revolution, it is necessary that there be at least
the beginning of an attack against the roots of society; the State and
the economic organization, This is what happened in Russia starting from
February 1917 and accelerating little by little ... One cannot speak of
such a beginning in Spain, where the proletarians submitted to the
State. From the beginning, everything. they did (military struggle
against Franco, social transformations) was carried out under the aegis
of Capital. The best proof of this is the rapid development of those
activities which the antifascists of the Left are incapable of
explaining. The military struggle quickly turned to statist bourgeois
methods which were accepted by the extreme Left on the grounds of
efficiency (and which were almost always proven to be inefficient). The
democratic State can no more carry on armed struggle against fascism
than it can prevent it from coming to power peacefully. It is perfectly
normal for a bourgeois Republican State to reject the use of methods of
social struggle required to demoralize the enemy and reconcile itself
instead to a traditional war of fronts, where it stands no chance faced
with a modern army, better equipped and trained for this type of combat.
As for the socializations and collectivizations, they likewise lacked
the driving force of communism, in particular because the
non-destruction of the State prevented them from organizing an
anti-mercantile economy at the level of the whole of society, and
isolated them into a series of precariously juxtaposed communities
lacking common action, The State soon re-established its authority.
Consequently there was no revolution or even the beginnings of one in
Spain after August, 1936. On the contrary the movement towards
revolution was increasingly obstructed and its renewal increasingly
improbable. It is striking to note that in May, 1937, the proletarians
again pulled themselves together to oppose the State (this time the
democratic State) by armed insurrection, but did not succeed in
prolonging the battle to the point of rupture with the State, After
having submitted to the legal State in 1936, the proletarians were able
to shake the foundations of this State in May, 1937, only to yield
before the "representative" organizations which urged them to lay down
their arms. The proletarians confronted the State, but did not destroy
it. They accepted the counsels of moderation from the POUM and the CNT:
even the radical group "Friends of Durruti" did not call for the
destruction of these counter-revolutionary organizations.

We may speak of war in Spain, but not of revolution. The primary
function of this war was to solve a capitalist problem: the construction
of a legitimate State in Spain which would develop its national Capital
in the most efficient manner possible while integrating the proletariat.
Viewed from this angle, the analyses of the sociological composition of
the two opposing armies is largely irrelevant, like those analyses which
measure the "proletarian" character of a party by the percentage of
workers among its members. Such facts are real enough and must be taken
into account, but are secondary in comparison to the social function of
what we are trying to understand. A party with a working class
membership which supports capitalism is counter-revolutionary. The
Spanish Republican army, which included certainly a great number of
workers but fought for capitalist objectives, was no more revolutionary
than Franco's army.

The formula "imperialist war" as applied to this conflict will shock
those who associate imperialism with the struggle for economic
domination, pure and simple. But the underlying purpose of imperialist
wars, from 1914-1918 to the present, is to resolve both the economic and
social contradictions of Capital, eliminating the potential tendency
towards the communist movement. It scarcely matters than in Spain the
war was not directly concerned with fighting over markets. The war
served to polarize the proletarians of the entire world, in both the
fascist and democratic countries, around the opposition
fascism/antifascism. Thus was the Holy Alliance of 1939-1945 prepared.
The economic and strategic motives were not, however, lacking. It was
necessary for the opposing camps, which were not yet well defined, to
win themselves allies or create benevolent neutrals, and to probe the
solidity of alliances. Also it was quite normal for Spain not to
participate in World War II. Spain had no need to do so, having solved
her own social problem by the double crushing (democratic and fascist)
of the proletarians in her own war; her economic problem was decided by
the victory of the conservative capitalist forces which proceeded to
limit the development of the forces of production in order to avoid a
social explosion. But again, contrary to all ideology, this
anti-capitalist, "feudal" fascism began to develop the Spanish economy
in the sixties, in spite of itself.

The 1936-1939 war fulfilled the same function for Spain as World War II
for the rest of the world, but with the following important difference
(which modified neither the character nor the function of the conflict):
it started off from a revolutionary upsurge strong enough to repulse
fascism and force democracy to take up arms against the fascist menace,
but too weak to destroy them both. But by not defeating both, the
revolution was doomed, because both fascism and democracy were potential
forms of the legitimate capitalist State. Whichever one triumphed, the
proletarians were sure to be crushed by the blows always reserved for
them by the capitalist State....


NOTES

(1) Public opinion does not condemn Nazism so much for its horrors,
because since then other States - in fact the capitalist organization of
the world economy - have proven to be just as destructive of human life,
through wars and artificial famines, as the Nazis. Rather Nazism is
condemned because it acted deliberately, because it was conscously
willed, because it decided to exterminate the Jews. No one is
responsible for famines which decimate whole peoples, but the Nazis -
they wanted to exterminate. In order to eradicate this absurd moralism,
one must have a materialist conception of the concentration camps. They
were not the product of a world gone mad. On the contrary, they obeyed
normal capitalist logic applied in special circumstances. Both in their
origin and in their operation, the camps belonged to the capitalist
world...
   
(2) Daniel Guerin, Fascism and Big Business, New York (1973).

(3) Bulletin communiste, Nov. 27, 1925. Boris Souvarine was born in Kiev
in 1895 but emigrated to France at an early age. A self-educated worker,
he was one of the founders of the Comintern and the PCF, but was
expelled from both organizations in 1924 for leftist deviations.
   
(4) Rassemblement du Peuple Frangais (RPF), a Gaullist party
(1947-1952). Poujadism, a right-wing petty bourgeois movement of the 4th
Republic. Rassemblement pour la Republique (RPR), a contemporary
Gaullist party.
   
(5) 100,000 Japanese were interned in camps in the USA during World War
II, but there was no need to liquidate them.
   
(6) Humaniti, March 6, 1972.

(7) The Kapp putsch of 1920 was defeated by n general strike, but the
insurrection in the Ruhr which broke out immediately following and which
aspired to go beyond tbe defense of democracy was repressed on behalf of
the State... by the army which had just supported the putsch.
   
(8) Simon Leys, The Chairman's New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural
Revolution, London (1977). 

(9) This support ranging from the extreme right to the left should not
be surprising. It's common enough for Latin American Communist parties
to support military or dictotorial regimes on the grounds they are
"progressive" in the sense of supporting the Allies during World War II,
developing national capitalism, or making concessions to the workers.
Cf. Victor Alba, Politics & the Labor Movement in Latin America,
Stanford (1968). Maoists and Trotskyists often behave the same way, e.g.
in Bolivia.
   
(10) Le Monde, Feb. 7-8 (1971).

(11) Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, International,
New York (1972), p. 54.
   
(12) Marx & Engels, Collected Works 13, Lawrence & Wishart, London
(1980), p. 340.

(13) George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, London (1938).

(14) Abel Paz, Durruti: The People Armed, Black Rose Books, Montrial
(1976).

(15) Marx & Engels, Collected Works 13, London (1980), p. 422.

(16) Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets; The Russian Workers, Peasants, and
Soldiers Councils 1905-1921, New York (1974).
   
(17) Marx & Engels, Ecrits militaires, L'Herne (1970), p. 143.

(18) V. I. Lenin, Collected Works 24, Moscow (1964), p, 236.

(19) C. Semprun-Maura, Rivolution et contre-rivolution en Catalogne,
Mame (1974), pp, 53-60.
   
(20) Marx & Engels, Writings on the Paris Commune, Monthly Review,
New York (1971), p. 7O.
  
(21) Ibid., pp. 75-76,

(22) Ibid., p. 80.

(23) Saul K. Padover, ed., The Letters of Karl Marx, Prentice-Hall
(1979), pp 333-335.
   
(24) A. Nunes, Les rivolutions du Mexique, Flammarion (1975), pp. 101-2.


ACRONYMS

    Germany:
    SPD       Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands
    KPD       Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands

    Italy:
    PCI       Partito Comunista Italiano
    PSI       Partito Socialista Italiano
    PNF       Partito Nazionale Fascista
    CGL       Confederazione Generale del Lavoro
    
    France:
    PCF       Parti Communiste Frangais
    SFIO      Section Frangaise de l'Internationale Ouvrihre

    Chile:
    UP        Unidad Popular (electoral coalition of Socialist
              Cormmunist, and Radical parties with several
              smaller groups)
    CGT       Confederacion General de Trabajadores
    
    Portugal:
    PCP       Partido Comunista Portuguhs
    PSP       Partido Socialista Portuguhs
    
    Spain:
    CNT       Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo
    PSOE      Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol
    POUM      Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista
    PCE       Partido Comunista de Espana
    UGT       Union General de Trabajadores


