Critical history of the P”C”E from its origins to the counterrevolution
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Index
- The founding of the PCE (1920-1923)
- The sectarism of the PCE
- The Antifascist Party
Before diving fully, let’s go to something that is not so these days: what are we talking about when we talk about communism? Without complications or convoluted words, communism is the real movement that denies existing conditions and moves towards a society without state, social classes, or commodities. Therefore, communism isn’t socialism in one country, national-communism, nor applauding butcheries of proletarians in imperialist conflicts. It is neither the repression of revolutionary minorities when they defend the revolution against the alliance with the progressive bourgeoisie. In this regard, let’s listen to what Munis tells us:
SOCIALIST COUNTRIES
Deceptive meaning: Those in which capital, nationalised, exploits the proletariat indiscriminately. The latter no longer even retains the freedom to refuse the price offered for his labor power, nor any other freedom whatsoever: strike, word, association or even simple movement.
Revolutionary meaning: Those countries, nonexistent today, where the productive function is carried out without wage labor and commodities cease to be such in order to become products available without an equivalent. The sale of the labor force by itself implies the existence of a purchasing capital, while the capital–wage relationship presupposes—and cannot help but presuppose—the exploitation of the latter. The proof of the suppression of capitalism is the suppression of wage labor[1].
There are many ways to falsify history, and it isn’t necessary to lie, it’s enough simply to omit whatever is inconvenient to tell. What we intend to do is bring to the table the omissions and distortions made by the Stalinist counterrevolution when talking about the history of the PCE.
Broadly speaking, we could divide the officialist view of the “Communist” Party of Spain into 5 different stages: its origins and the internal struggles up to the Miguel Primo de Rivera dictatorship; a second stage, corresponding to the “sectarian” years under the leadership of José Bullejos until his dismissal in 1932; and then we would have the great antifascist and defender of democracy party -that is the most common image, which will last until Franco’s death-; afterwards, during the Transition years, we have the party of responsibility that sets aside its objectives for the sake of democracy; and finally, the party in democracy after the first victory of Felipe Gonzalez. In reality, this structure only does one thing: hide what Stalinist counter-revolution meant and the role of national-communist parties in defending Soviet imperialism and socialism in one country. In this text, we are mainly going to refer to the first years of PCE and will arrive, in a more concise way, to the postwar years.
- The founding of the PCE (1920-1923)
The international revolutionary wave that swept every corner of the planet the following years after the end of the First World War was also felt in Spain, during what has come to be known as the Trienio Bolchevique[2], from 1918 to 1920. The origin and radicalism of that first communist party must be understood within that context, as both a product and a factor of class struggle. The founding of the Communist International in 1919 and the call to adhere to it, made it increasingly difficult to maintain the differences within the PSOE (PSOE as “Partido Socialista Obrero Español”, or the Spanish Socialist Workers Party)[3] between those who defended the Russian revolution and those who wanted the reconstruction of the II International and a return to the period before the First World War. In this context, an extraordinary Congress of the PSOE was held in December 1919 to decide the adhesion to the III International, which ended with 14,010 votes versus 12.497, voting in favor of staying in the II International, with the aim of giving it time to unify with the Communist International. If at the next congress the II International did not unify, the PSOE would join the III International. This decision, taken by the terceristas[4] with the confidence that they would succeed in winning most of the party over to their position, was received with impatience by the leaders of the Youth wing of the party, which also held its Congress in December and took a stand in favor of creating a section of the Communist International.
In this situation of confrontation between the Youth and the terceristas, two delegates of the Communist International arrived in Madrid in January 1920 from New York, Mikhail Borodin and M. N. Roy, with the order of proposing the creation of a communist party in Spain. These delegates established contact with the members of the left of the PSOE who had just constituted themselves as the pro-Third International Group and, through them, with the members of the National Committee of the Socialist Youth. Like Juan Andrade[5] explains:
The idea was easily and immediately accepted by the National Committee of the Socialist Youth, even more so because it coincided with their own intentions, which had only been delayed by concern over the economic difficulties of maintaining their own publication and propaganda. Faced with the promise of financial assistance, the decision was accepted without hesitation[6].
It was in April 1920, with the promise of financial aid, when part of the Socialist Youth split and founded the Spanish Communist Party. The party of the 100 Kids, as it is still referred to disparagingly, at that time maintained antiparliamentary positions and felt close to the positions of the German-Dutch left, Gorter and the KAPD. But that is not all, Bordiga, for example, wrote in El Comunista, the official publication of the party.[7] The defense of a “left-wing” position would be explained because of their juvenile radicalism, of an infantile disorder. In that sense, which could not be further from the truth, those who mainly expressed positions against the war during the World War, being the Socialist Youth Federation of Madrid the only one who adhered itself to the declaration of Kienthal, were defined as just “100 Kids”. It was not “leftism” but the search for revolutionary positions in the face of the opportunistic drift that was starting develop within the Communist International, as can be seen in the words of Juan Andrade (then leader of the Spanish Communist Party), referencing the critique made by Lenin in his “Leftwing Communism: An infantile disorder”:[8]
The declarations made by Lenin are completely opportunistic and those of the Executive Committee of Moscow do not reflect a very sound judgment either. As we maintain a Left-wing position we cannot solidarize with that (Andrade to Geers[9],03/07/1920)
The positions of the left were the ones the first Communist Party adopted. Although it would be an error to generalize and talk about the first Communist Party as a party organized around a coherent and already constituted left-wing program, as is the case of the PCdI and KAPD, it is important to highlight its revolutionary instinct and its search for truly revolutionary positions. Against the silence imposed by Stalinism, it is always interesting to let the protagonists of the events speak for themselves. Luis Portela, who was a leader of the first party and later of the unified party, wrote in 1980 an article where he reminisced his experience of those early years, now expressed as the positions of a militant of the Party of the Socialists of Catalonia, associated to the PSOE:
At the heart of the PCE a left-wing current akin to those who arose in Holland, Italy, Belgium, Germany and even Russia manifested itself. The most relevant figures of this tendency where Pannekoek, Rutges and Geers in Holland, Bordiga in Italy, Van Overstraeten in Belgium and Alexandra Kollontai in Russia (…) To be honest, in Spain it did not go further than a cutaneous affliction, an illness that did not deepen itself in the organism of the party. It was a typical position of intellectuals, and there is nothing surprising in the fact that a sharply leftist tendency appeared in the PCE, who counted in Madrid with a numerous group of youngsters who had gone through university, neither is it a surprise the fact that in a party formed essentially by young people this tendency pulled many militants. Andrade and Ugarte where the most representative men of this current. Andrade personally maintained, correspondence with Van Overstraeten, with Bordiga, and above all with the Dutch.
(…) Since his first activities in Spain, Humbert-Droz[10] showed himself systematically hostile towards the founding core of the communist movement in our country, the Spanish Communist Party (PCE). He contributed considerably to creating a completely distorted image of the first-generation communists: he exaggerated the importance of the antiparliamentary current that had emerged among them in the early days—based, in general, not on matters of principle but on tactical reasons—and he himself had to acknowledge, as Graziadei [11]also did, that there was nothing irrational about it. From that point, he attributed to them deviations toward anarchism and terrorism.[12]
In the words of Portela we see how, on one hand, the arguments of “leftism” as kind of a juvenile phase or something utopian that has a place only in the head of intellectuals is disconnected from reality. On the other hand, and here is the important part, it gives proof of the existence inside the party of positions akin to the ones defended by the left of the international. Furthermore, on small scale, it’s possible to see the centrist position and the search to slander the left in the example of Humbert-Droz.
In that sense, it is useful to see the position that the PCE had regarding the trade unions. On one hand, it opposed the formation of new unions and criticized the reformism of the UGT, but it defended that it was in those same unions where the battle in defense of the revolutionary positions had to take place. And, at the same time, the idea of trade union unity was also put forward as a preliminary step toward the creation of workers councils.
Accepting whatever good each side may have and adding what both lack and we can provide: an advanced, objective ideology and an attack plan carefully studied on a broad basis and with infallible results. […] In sum: giving the unions as much breadth as possible in order to put an end to corporatism and to enrich them with the communist ideal is our mission; afterwards, we shall have to devote ourselves to the creation of factory and workshop councils, reversing the natural order because the leaders do not like the Councils, and they will have to be removed first.[13]
We see the intention to position themselves inside the debates that were happening in the workers’ movement around the role of the communists with the trade unions and the factory councils as class organs. We must understand the recently born party inside this revolutionary instinct of its militants whom, at the same time, try to orient themselves without a clear program.
On the other hand, the PSOE had another congress in June of 1920 to decide wether it adhered to the Communist international or not. In this occasion the atmosphere was favorable towards the Terceristas, a fact that was demonstrated by the majority vote for the Third International, but with the final decision being delayed until after a delegate from every tendency of the party made a trip to the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic and presented the party with a report on their stay. This way it gave time to the defenders of the second international to recuperate their control over a divided party. The trip to Russia of Fernando de los Ríos and Daniel Anguiano, the last one as delegate for the Terceristas, with their reports being totally antagonistic, was only the verification of a situation that was already a fact. The congress where it was finally decided to adhere to the communist international took place in April 1921 -a year and four months after the extraordinary congress to address the adhesion- and it was simply the confirmation of a split that already existed within the organization, which materialized with the walkout from the congress of the entire Tercerista current and the formation of the PCOE (Partido Comunista Obrero Español, or Spanish Communist Workers Party). Although this new party counted with former defenders of the side of the allies and other supporters of participation in the First World War among its leaders, it is true that it had with more militants and geographical extension in comparison with the then “PCE”. At the same time, they had won over the Socialist Youths that were just reconstituted after the split of the PCE in April of 1920.
Juan Andrade, although a Trotskyist leader when he wrote it, offers a valuable reflection on Marxism in Spain at the time of the two splits and on the peculiarities of the Spanish Socialist Party in comparison with the major European social democratic parties, which we consider worth revisiting:
The Communist Parties have been formed in every country through opposition minorities that existed before, during and after the war inside the social democrat parties. These minorities maintained inside those parties, in a more or less sound way, the principles of revolutionary Marxism. They constituted nuclei of Marxist affinity inside social democracy. They struggled daily against the reformist clique, and they tried to give a coherent Marxist policy to the party. When the communist parties emerged, that is to say, when the split inside the social democrat parties happened, the new communist parties that arose from it encountered themselves with a theoretically qualified leadership because of the struggles developed inside the old party. The constitution in these countries of the communist party was the logical result of all the activities against official reformism.
It cannot be said in any way that this was the case of Spain. There has not been a country with less of a Marxist tradition in Europe, even in the erroneous sense that the social democrats gave to the word. “Pablism[14]”, the sole definition that can be made of what has been painted as socialism in Spain, was a mix of plain reformist workerism and petit bourgeois democratism. The dissemination of the works of Lafargue by the old socialists was, deep down, the necessity to give a theoretical paint to their politics. The great problems posed to European social democracy did not have any echo inside Spanish socialism. It was politically isolated from the world.[15]
We do not understand the words of Andrade in the sense that Stalinism gives to the limited political importance that the PCE had up until the republic. Drawing on something real, namely the absence of a strong Marxist tradition and of a revolutionary opposition within social democracy, they erase all the experience of the first years of the communist movement in Spain and of its different expressions under the argument of sectarianism or political inexistence. They do this only to justify that the Stalinist mass party of the 30s was the true communist party and that it is from that point where its history really began. For us it gives a good explanation of the confusion in the positions defended by the left of the communist party and the strength inside the party of a line engaged in tailism with the international that was, de facto, the one that led the party during the second half of the 20s, as well as during the civil war.
With mediation by the international the two parties unified in November 1921. This is the date, the 14th of November of 1921 the one that is considered as the foundation of the Communist Party of Spain. There would be a permanent struggle since the fusion between the faction that defended the majority positions of the international and the faction who still maintained left-wing positions[16]. Those were the ones who created the Communist Group inside the PCE, for which they were spelled, though some were reintegrated again later. The defeat and subsequent repression of the Trienio Bolchevique in Spain and the downturn of class struggle in a world scale after 1921 made the militant activity of the PCE difficult, which, in the few years in which it was possible, focused on denouncing the war in Morocco; but all its activity came to a halt due to the coup d’état made by Primo de Rivera and the establishment of the dictatorship that lasted until 1930.
- The sectarism of the PCE
The widely extended idea that there would be a sectarian PCE that persisted until José Diaz assumed the General Secretaryship in 1932, it’s an heiress of the traditions of the Stalinist International, which blamed the national parties for its constant opportunistic shifts. In this case, it will start with the appointment of José Bullejos as General Secretary in 1925 to carry out what was named as the bolshevization of the communist parties. This meant the obligation to defend socialism in one country and the subordination of the national parties to the geopolitical interests of soviet capitalism. The personification in Bullejos of the debacle that the PCE suffered due to the repression of the dictatorship and the adventurism of the Third Period policy of the Stalinist International serves to hide the consequences of Stalin’s policies. The problem would no longer be the betrayal to the communist program in the name of defending the USSR, but the authoritarian and sectarian personality of Bullejos and his clique. In this way, the purges and expulsions within the party are to be blamed to a single person rather than to the method imposed on all the communist parties through the bolshevization process, which prepared them for the rise of the Stalinist leader who knew only how to obey. The same process can be seen with the maneuvers of Gramsci in the Communist Party of Italy to expel the majority of the left, which cleared the way for that counter-revolutionary that Togliatti was.
Although today, the “Communist” Party delights in wrapping itself in the flag of the Second Republic, and makes its republican discourse something that defines its identity and one of the hallmarks of its history, we will see that reality is somewhat different. Not because it had any problem in defending a bourgeois state and the capitalist social relations, but rather because its defense of the republican bourgeoisie was only a consequence of Stalin’s change in imperialist alliances from 1934 onward and his turn towards western democracies. Returning to 1931, what we find is an almost vanished communist party which, in accordance to the Third Period policy, displays Stalinist voluntarism by calling for the formation of soviets. Their activity will primarily consist of attacking the “social-fascists” of PSOE and the CNT “anarcho-fascists”. Meanwhile, we witness the greatest period of activity of the Spanish proletariat, in which its revolutionary minorities suffered from the very first moment the implacable repression of the Second Republic.
From the beginning of the Second Republic there was constant criticism within the International itself, as well as from the group around José Díaz, directed to the leadership of fPCE for being isolated from the struggles of the proletariat and for failing to correctly implement the tactics of the Third Period, when directives such us the base-level united front or the policy against socialfascism came directly from the International itself. The real problem, in fact, was a search for greater independence of the national leadership of Bullejos from Moscow. The defense of one form of national-communism against another. It is interesting to see how, through Stepanov and Manuilski, delegates of the International in charge of Western Europe, the bureaucratic reshuffle is justified and how the blame is of the party and not of the counter-revolutionary policy of the International.
And when the events came, when the Republic was proclaimed by the powerful drive of the masses who took the streets, the party issued orders that were wrong and incompatible for them. The Spanish Communist Party has too many anarchist survivals; it is not a purely proletarian organization, and constitutes rather a group of sectarian propagandists weakly linked to the masses, without any clear perspectives. The Spanish Communist Party is a small gathering of friends crystallized inside a retort. The regional organizations lead a languid life, unconcerned about the masses, limiting themselves to waiting for circulars from the center. This is already reaching inadmissible proportions. Numerous cases can be cited in which revolutionary workers have not been admitted into the party “so that the qualitative level of the communist elite does not drop.” This demonstrates the “petit-bourgeois” revolutionary spirit, which tends towards the creation of the “hero”, which is nothing more than a reflection of political despotism.[17]
This written from 1932 served the function of justifying the replacement with another bureaucracy more docile to the interests of Moscow. It is the same style that was imposed with bolshevization and will be characteristic of the Stalinist bureaucrat: defamation and the erasure of the past.[18]
It is striking to see the reason behind the expulsion of Bullejo’s “clique” and how the party’s past and present spokesmen suffer from a kind of amnesia when speaking about PCE during the Republic. Proud of antifascism and the interclass alliance of the Popular Front, they seem to forget the justification for the expulsion of the Bullejist leadership. Let’s see what Bullejos himself says about what occurred during General Sanjurjo’s attempted coup d’etat in the summer of 1932.
This time, we, the members of the party secretariat who were in Madrid [..] did not wish to repeat the extremist errors committed on April 14, and in the manifesto drafted by me after analyzing the causes of the events–which we attributed to the government’s policy of appeasement–we launched the slogan “Defense of the Republic”.
[…] It wasn’t about unconditionally supporting the Azaña government, but rather bringing about a coalition of all popular democratic forces on the basis of a revolutionary program of defense of the Republic, that would include, in the first place, the military, political, and economic disarmament of all the reactionary elements[19].
Only the most shameless cynicism can justify the policy of the PCE and the International. In less than a year, there was an accusation of issuing “wrong and incompatible orders” during the proclamation of the Republic, only to immediately use the failure to follow the tactics of the Third Period as a justification for expelling the leadership. The constant zigzags of the “Communist” International are explained by the different international interests of the Soviet Union, which were linked through the different national organizations. Until 1935, the PCE followed the policy of the so-called Third Period, which in Spain took concrete form in the struggle for a Republic from below and the fight against social-fascism.[20] From there, in that year, it would move to the creation of a Popular Front with the progressive bourgeoisie against fascism, which, just as before, came endorsed by Stalin’s new turn of rapprochement with the Western bourgeoisies.
- The Antifascist Party
In what seemed like an unexpected turn of events, the PCE joined the Alianza Obrera[21] in September 1934, a month before the Asturian uprising broke out. What happened to change the party’s position from social fascism to collaboration with the PSOE in less than a year? Did the PCE abandon its sectarian and isolationist stance? The reality is very different and has nothing to do with the initiative of the party in Spain. Hitler’s victory in 1933 and, above all, Germany’s withdrawal from the Disarmament Conference forced the Soviet Union to change its international alliances[22]. Antifascism was very useful in concealing Stalin’s mere interest in defending national capital, as he himself said at the 17th Congress of the CPSU in 1934:
Naturally, we are far from enthusiastic about Germany’s fascist regime. But this is not a question of fascism, for the simple reason that fascism in Italy, for example, has not prevented the USSR from establishing the best diplomatic relations with that country[23].
It was not a question of fascism but rather of the threat to Soviet borders posed by a warmongering Germany that was rearming itself. With the flag of Leninism at half-mast, the Soviet Union became a member of the League of Nations—that ‘kitchen of thieves,’ as Lenin once called it—in September 1934. That same year, negotiations began with France that would culminate in the signing of the Franco-Soviet pact a year later. —– It is in this context that we can understand the shift in the PCE that culminated in the Popular Front tactic a year later. The great Communist Party, idealised by all Stalinists, the party of José Díaz and La Pasionaria, was nothing more than the party of interclassism and the defence of bourgeois democracy. Dimitrov made this very clear at the 7th Congress of the Stalinist International:
The situation in capitalist countries today is different. Today, the fascist counter-revolution is attacking bourgeois democracy, striving to subject workers to the most barbaric regime of exploitation and oppression. Today, the working masses of several Western countries are forced to choose, specifically for today, not between the dictatorship of the proletariat and bourgeois democracy, but between bourgeois democracy and fascism[24].
Although, in practice, it had already been in place since 1934, the agreements of the 7th Congress were the starting point for the shift to the interclassist tactic of forming popular fronts with the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie, as a defence of bourgeois democracy against fascism. Like an obedient puppy, the PCE began campaigning in favour of the Popular Front and unity with the former Spanish social-fascist party. Indeed, this was the same interclass unity that the previous leadership had defended after Sanjurjo’s coup, for which they were expelled, as we explained earlier. The second half of the year focused on the debate over what the Popular Front should be: an electoral coalition or a governing party. The interest here was the PCE’s resolve to support the bourgeoisie against any revolutionary manifestation, based on the belief that it was necessary to first complete a bourgeois revolution in Spain, and that any revolutionary attempt would therefore be pure adventurism. —-The victory of the Popular Front in February 1936 and the immediate release of all imprisoned revolutionaries led to a resurgence of the class struggle, which the brutal repression of the Asturian uprising had temporarily paralysed. This was a situation where in the months between February and the coup of 18 July alone, more than 113 general strikes and 228 strikes in towns and cities were organised. Let us look at the position of the PCE in one of the most important actions, the construction strike in Madrid:
It is no secret that after 16th February, fascist employers are using a tactic whereby they first push workers to declare disputes and then prolong their resolution for as long as necessary and possible to drive the masses to despair. This will provoke sporadic acts that are pointless and ineffective […], but which will set the workers against the government, because this is one of the conditions […] for a coup d’état. […] The attitude of the employers […] makes it necessary for construction workers, even if they are not satisfied with the collective agreement, to end a situation whose prolongation poses a serious danger to all workers. […] The time has come to know how to end a strike, without giving up the possibility, established in the collective agreement, of continuing talks on the issue of wages in the mixed labour council[25].
In this article from Mundo Obrero on the 6th of July 1936, we can already see the role played by the PCE, which increased during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). As the official historian Fernando Hernández Sánchez[26] says in the documentary on the centenary of the PCE, Parias de la tierra: 100 años de Partido Comunista (Outcasts of the Earth: 100 Years of the Communist Party): ‘It is the party of the struggle against fascism’ and is a good example of what antifascism is, the abandonment of class independence in favour of defending the interests of one faction of the national bourgeoisie against another, while accusing the revolutionaries of being uncontrollable.
The fight against fascism and the defence of democracy continues to be the pride of its militants and the basis of its institutional legitimacy. After all, it was them who most fiercely defended republican democracy and were ‘The Party’ of anti-Francoism and those who most fought for the return of democracy in Spain. But as the Stalinists liked to say during the coup, ‘the Government commands and the Popular Front obeys,’ and the Government feared the armed proletariat more than the military, with whom it tried to reach an agreement to form a government of national unity on 18 July. As we know, if the coup was stopped, it was thanks to the independent action of the armed proletariat and not to the counter-revolutionary leaders and their fellow travellers, the antifascist bourgeoisie. This can be seen very clearly in the orders issued by Dimitrov, leader of the Comintern, on 23 July, at the height of the revolutionary fervour of the proletariat, just a few hours after the revolutionary days of 19 July 1936:
At the current stage, we should not take on the task of creating soviets and trying to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat in Spain. That would be a fatal mistake. Therefore, we must say: act under the appearance of defending the Republic; do not abandon the positions of the democratic regime in Spain at this time, when the workers have weapons in their hands, as this is of great importance for achieving victory over the rebels. We should advise them to carry on with those weapons, as we have done in other situations, trying to maintain unity with the petty bourgeoisie and the peasants, and with the radical intellectuals, consolidating and strengthening the current stage of the democratic Republic. […] Needless to say, our Spanish comrades are subject to many temptations. For example, Mundo Obrero has taken over the magnificent building of Acción Popular. That is wonderful. But if our people begin to confiscate factories and businesses and wreak havoc, the petty bourgeoisie, the radical intellectuals and part of the peasantry may turn away from us, and our forces are not yet sufficient for a struggle against the counterrevolutionaries[27].
Defence of the petty bourgeoisie, property and the government: these were the three basic pillars of Stalinist policy during the war, and they were upheld at all costs. On the same day that Dimitrov wrote the secret report in Barcelona, the PSUC was created, which was the result of the union of different socialist groups and Stalinist cells. From its very creation, it became the hound of the Catalan petty bourgeoisie, organised in the Federations of Guilds and Entities of Small Traders and Industrialists (Federaciones de Gremios y Entidades de Pequeños Comerciantes e Industriales), to defend property against the confiscations and collectivisations that the proletariat was carrying out in Catalonia. And although we find a proletariat that by the end of July was already caught between two fronts of an imperialist conflict, the depth of its actions and the revolutionary atmosphere in Catalonia in 1936 were undeniable. Faced with this situation, the counterrevolutionaries, under the orders of Russian capitalism, were very clear about their duty, as expressed in the French ‘Communist’ Party newspaper, ‘L’Humanité’ on 3 August:
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain has asked us, in response to the fantastic and biased reports in certain newspapers, to inform the public that the Spanish people, in their struggle against the rebels, do not seek to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat and have only one objective: the defence of the republican order and respect for private property[28].
And not only did they achieve their goal, by far, but they also repressed, murdered and tortured those who supported the revolution[29]. When we talk about the PCE as the party of the struggle against fascism, we are talking precisely about the defence of the republican order. The class struggle disappears in an interimperialist conflict; all that exists is the vision of the opposing bourgeois factions. —-We do not want to give a full description of the events and actions of Stalinism in Spain in the 1930s. Instead, we will focus on the epic images of the official history of Stalinism and the war: the aid of the USSR and the fight against fascism.
With Largo Caballero assuming presidency of the government in September and the workers’ organizations taking part in it for the first time, measures will be taken oriented towards reconstituting the institutions as well as gaining back control over the proletariat, which the republicans were unable to maintain. It was in September when the militias — already immersed in an interimperialistic war — were militarised and military discipline was restored. It is in that very moment when Negrín, in the service of Stalinism, paid the Soviet “aid” with the shipment of the gold reserves of the Bank of Spain to Moscow, which was answered with the shipment of weapons and the arrival in mass of the Soviet advisors and NKVD agents, and with them the persecution of revolutionaries, of those who did not struggle in defence of property and the republican order. And eventually they ended up in every circle of state power and direction of war while they took up the task of persecuting, through the Military Information Service (Servicio de Información Militar), the so-called “uncontrolled”, that is, those who refused to accept the lie of having to win the war first, then doing revolution. Restoring the order meant restoring the repressive bodies, which had virtually disappeared since many had gone over to the Nationalist faction or had dissolved in the proletariat’s committees. Members of the PCE took up the task with enthusiasm, always obedient to the true leaders from Moscow. One of them was Alexander Orlov, Stalin’s envoy for organising the NKVD in Spain, who would plan the kidnapping and torture of Andreu Nin. There was also the Italian Vittorio Vidali, alias Carlos Contreras, who took part in the formation of the Quinto Regimiento and shared the Stalinist fondness for persecuting revolutionaries. Another who had an important role in the persecution was Ernö Gerö or Pedro, who was a true leader of the PSUC in Catalonia.
Lastly, we find the following to be a great example for its brutal honesty, that being unusual within the Stalinist clique: the “four friendly pieces of advice” that Stalin wrote to Largo Caballero in December 1936 which shows the clear counterrevolutionary nature of Stalinism:
- One should pay attention to the peasantry, which, in such an agrarian country as Spain, is of great importance. It would be advisable to issue decrees relative to agrarian problems and to taxation which would be favourable to the peasantry. It would also be advisable to attract the peasants to the army or to organize partisan peasant detachments at the rear of the Fascist armies.
- The petty and middle urban bourgeoisie should be attracted to the government side and be given at least the chance to occupy a neutral position, which would favour the government, by protecting it from attempts at confiscation and securing as far as possible the freedom of trade. Otherwise, these sectors will continue to follow the fascists.
- The leaders of the Republican party should not be repulsed, but on the contrary, should be drawn in, brought nearer and associated with the common exercise of government. It is particularly necessary to secure the support of the Government by Azaña and his group, doing everything possible to help them overcome their hesitations. This is necessary to prevent the enemies of Spain from regarding it as a communist republic and to forestall their intervention, which would constitute the greatest danger to the republic of Spain.
- It would be advisable to find an opportunity to state in the press that the Spanish government will not condone any action against the property rights and the legitimate interests of those foreigners in Spain who are citizens of states which do not support the rebels. [30]
A true handbook for Stalinism’s role in Spain. Here we have the greatness of The Party, example of antifascist struggle, defence of the bourgeoisie’s interests and of property. There is only one way to carry this all out: repression of the revolutionaries and exploitation of the proletariat or, using their words, “war effort”. Let us see what it meant to oppose this friendly advice. Stalinism’s official history tends to forget the 1937 May Days or, if mentioned, the revolutionaries are virtually compared to the Francoists, like they did in real time. It was the last attack of the proletariat on the bourgeois state, whether it be Republican or Francoist. The last act of proletarian autonomy which suffered the revenge of the counterrevolution draped in the antifascist flag. Since the defeat of May, the persecution of revolutionaries rocketed and prisons to the rear were filled with anarchists, members of the POUM and communist militants like Grandizo Munis or Jaime Fernández who miraculously survived the bourgeois and Stalinist counterrevolution.[31] There was nothing else to do for revolutionaries from that moment on than to resist repression.
With the victory of Franco and the arrival of the dictatorship the PCE continued acting the same, but with greater danger for its members. It was not the leaders who underwent that danger; they enjoyed the comfort that their obedience got them, as long as it remained intact. During those years, whether it be in exile or inside the country, a struggle for power and a witch hunt were carried out in typical Stalinist fashion. On the death of José Díaz on 21st May 1942 begins a struggle for power between Dolores Ibárruri “La Pasionaria” and Jesús Hernández. The latter was in a more favourable position thanks to a closer relationship with the Communist International’s (CI) officials as they lived in the same place. He also had a closer relationship with the Spanish emigrants and stood for them being able to leave the USSR. This better position vanished on him being sent to Mexico, de facto preventing him from succeeding Díaz and finally being expelled from the party in May 1944. The fall of Jesús Hernández brought as a consequence the hunt of the Hernandists and the accusatory madness that was the mechanism through which the former followers of Hernández avoided being accused of traitors and looked to be in Ibárruri’s good books.
Just like the struggle for power between the leaders in exile, the reconstitution of the PCE inside Spain will also fall victim of such ways, and of the zigzagging of Soviet policy too: from the Treaty of Non-Aggression with Nazi Germany to the rupture of Tito’s Yugoslavia with the USSR and the anti-Titoist wave. The cases of Heriberto Quiñones and Jesús Monzón are only an example of the Stalinist ways and policies within the PCE.[32] Quiñones had played a secondary role within the PCE throughout the 1930s. He first worked with the CI delegate Codovila and later with Gerö. In 1941 he arrived in Madrid to rebuild the party after the fall of 1939. Quiñones, in his role as leader of the party inside Spain, came into conflict with the leadership established in Mexico through the cadres who arrived in Lisbon from there. They brought new guidelines for the party which Quiñones was accused of having ignored. The latter proposed a policy of national unity — continuing the line established in 1938 — of all antifascists and the discontented monarchists against the Francoist regime, which contradicted the line held by the leadership in Mexico (and Moscow) who wanted to thoroughly control the PCE’s activity in Spain and preferred a strategy of “passive resistance” in harmony with the needs of Russian diplomacy in the context of the Second World War. This led to a constant confrontation with the American leadership and its envoys, who were thought of ignoring the situation in Spain. At the beginning of 1942 the whole structure of the party in Spain and in Lisbon was dismantled by the police. In the light of such fall there began work on an apologetic narrative of the political positions of the party so typical of Stalinism, blaming Quiñones and all of his collaborators. He was accused of being a British agent[33], an informer and of having led the party to its ruin due to his sectarian and authoritarian ways. Before the arrest of Quiñones on 30th December 1941 some members of the party, included a member of the Quiñonist leadership, had already been planning his murder. In the end the plan did not work out because Quiñones was arrested so he couldn’t attend the appointment.[34] After, there was a fierce campaign against Quiñonism and its collaborators, accusing him of betrayal with the help of many testimonies and critical letters of many of his former collaborators. At the end of the day, not criticising him was a synonym of Quiñonism, that is, betrayal. In a 1950 article, Carrillo accused Quiñones of being a British spy with a plan to take advantage of the communists’ weakness inside Spain and turn them in to the police.
At that time in France, Jesús Monzón as local leader of the PCE carried out the National Unity policy — this time with the acquiescence of the party’s leadership in the USSR — due to Stalin’s change of alliance and his collaboration with the Allies after Hitler’s invasion of Russia. This version of National Unity, similar to that proposed by Quiñones but with the Soviet Union in a different international situation, managed to unite a part of the local and international opposition to Francoism under one same structure. At the same time Monzón continued with the same Stalinist ways of accusations and purges on the members. Or in his own words “clean all the previous one’s shit”, in reference to the previous Quiñonist leadership.[35] In his role as leader of the party in France and Spain he reorganized the party inside Spain and, via the National Unity Juntas (Juntas de Unión Nacional), he collaborated with Catholics who were discontent with the Regime or with conservatives like Juan March. Monzón, with the approval of the Supreme Junta of National Unity (Junta Suprema de la Unión Nacional) in Toulouse and the PCE’s leadership, organized a guerrilla invasion from the south of France in 1944 taking advantage of the organization of Spanish units within the French Resistance, which he had helped forming. This invasion, in which thousands of guerrilla fighters took part, was expected to promote a popular uprising that the party in Spain should prepare. The invasion of Val d’Aran, as it was known, was a total failure where thousands died and no popular uprising was brought about.
After the failure came the “cleaning all the previous one’s shit”, this time on Monzón and all his collaborators such as León Trilla, who was murdered by guerrilla fighters under Carrillo’s command. In the campaign deployed against Monzón he was accused of having planned the invasion of Val d’Aran as a way of destroying the party, him supposedly being a Francoist agent as seen through his family background. He was also accused of surrounding himself with adventurers and people resentful of the party like Trilla, who had been expelled in 1932 as a collaborator of José Bullejos. Apart from the whole battery of accusations, Monzón was said to be a Titoist because Tito had broken ties with Stalin in a national logic against the USSR. This led to regarding Titoism as another new way of anti-Soviet betrayal.
From the 1960s on, with Stalin dead, we are sold the picture of the party of reconciliation and democracy, of responsibility, setting its goals aside on behalf of democracy in Spain. Yet it is not hard making a comparison with the 1930s: antifascism is antifascism in any decade, and while there was no torturing and murdering revolutionaries anymore, it is the same old interclassism and defence of capital.
The intention of this text, however, is not to conduct a thorough analysis of the PCE, much less is it to continue covering its formal history. For us it is essentially about explaining a trajectory through which it rapidly changed its class nature, from a revolutionary organization to becoming a fundamental tool of counterrevolution in Spain during the Second Republic and the Civil War. After everything we have set forth it is important to understand that the PCE’s later history in the 1960s, 70s and 80s does not entail a qualitative leap of integration in the bourgeois and capitalist world, but is, in its Eurocommunist phase, a national and bourgeois evolution and continuation of the Stalinist counterrevolutionary gangrene which made of the PCE a fully counterrevolutionary force already in the 1930s.
CONTRAPORTADA
“The intention of this text is not in any case to carry out a detailed analysis of the PCE, much less to continue the trajectory of its formal history. For us, the essential thing is to explain a path in which its class nature rapidly changed, from a revolutionary organization to an essential instrument of counter-revolution in the Spain of the Second Republic and the Civil War. Based on everything we have developed, it is important to understand that the later history of the PCE in the 60s, 70s, and 80s does not mark a qualitative leap toward integration into the bourgeois and capitalist world, but rather that Eurocommunism represents a national and bourgeois evolution and continuation of the counter-revolutionary gangrene that Stalinism introduced and that already made the PCE an integrally counter-revolutionary force in the decade of the 1930s”
[1] Grandizo Munis: Lexicon of Contemporary Political Deception, Compared with the Revolutionary Lexicon, available at barbaria.net and in print.
[2] This refers to the wave of intense class struggle that, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, swept through the Spanish region from 1918 to 1921. Its main centers of struggle were Catalonia, driven by the industrial proletariat, and Andalusia, marked by the actions of the rural laborer proletariat.
[3] It was the organization of the social democrats in Spain during the time of the Second International, it has been the main face of the left wing of capital in that region for more than a hundred years, leading the current government of Spain.
[4] The name by which the members of the PSOE who were in favor of joining the Third International identified themselves
[5] Andrade was a Spanish revolutionary who served as a leader of the Socialist Youth and later became one of the early leaders of the first Communist Party of Spain (known as the “party of the 100 Kids”). After its unification with the PCOE under pressure from the Communist International, he was part of the lead of the Communist Party of Spain until his expulsion for criticizing the policy carried out by the Bullejos leadership. During the 1930s, he was a member of the Communist Opposition of Spain (Trotskyist) and later of the POUM.
[6] Taken from Pelai Pagès: La Historia Truncada del Partido Comunista de España (The Truncated History of the Communist Party of Spain). Libros Corrientes, 2021, Madrid, p. 36.
[7] As an example, the article “Party and Class” that Bordiga wrote was translated and published in El Comunista.
[8] Regarding this, see our pamphlet “The past of our being” in our web barbaria.net
[9] A comrade from the Dutch-German left who was in contact with Andrade
[10] He was the man tasked responsible with the Latin countries of western Europe by the Communist International
[11] Member of the Right of the Communist Party of Italy opposed to the majority on the left who was led by Bordiga. Graziadei was sent by the international as representative of its Executive Committee in the negotiations for the fusion between the two Spanish communist parties.
[12] Luis Portela: «El nacimiento y los primeros pasos del movimiento comunista en España», (The Birth and Early Steps of the Communist Movement in Spain) Estudios de historia social, nº 14, 1980, p. 206
[13] Citation taken from from Pelai Pagès: La Historia Truncada del Partido Comunista de España (The Truncated History of the Communist Party of Spain). Libros Corrientes, 2021, Madrid, p. 39
[14] In reference to Pablo Iglesias, founder and leader of the PSOE. His positions where central to the ideological construction of the party, and in that sense, we agree with the definition of his “socialist” tendency given by Andrade: “a mix of plain reformist workerism and petit bourgeois democratism”
[15] Ibidem, pages 41-42
[16] From the Third Congress of the Communist International in 1921 onward, a shift in the positions of the Communist International took shape, as it sought to win a majority within the workers’ movement through opportunistic tactics toward social democracy: unity with its left wings in new parties (see the German and Italian cases), or the tactics of the workers’ government or the united front. These tactics were opposed by the German-Dutch left in their more immediate manifestations, and in a deeper and more theoretical sense by the Italian left.
[17] Quote taken from Juan Ignacio Ramos: Los años decisivos. Teoría y práctica del Partido Comunista de España. Fundación Federico Engels, 2012, Madrid, pp 112-113. (The Decisive Years. Theory and Practice of the Communist Party of Spain). TN: In the original text, political despotism was caciquismo, a term used in Spain to refer to the political system in which local leaders and patrons, known as caciques, exercised decisive control over elections, patronage, and public administration. Through personal influence, clientelism, and manipulation of the electoral process, these figures mediated between central governments and local populations perpetuating oligarchic power structures.
[18] The elimination of the national leaderships of the ‘Communist’ Parties was a common practice on the part of the Stalinist Comintern. In this way, the zigzags in political lines were justified and, furthermore, the existence of docile leaderships was guaranteed. In some cases, this elimination was physical, as occurred with the entire leadership of the ‘Communist’ party in Poland in the 1930s
[19] Quoted in Juan Andrade: Apuntes para una historia del PCE (Notes for a History of the PCE), available in fundanin.net
[20] By social-fascism, they are referring to the accusation that social democracy is a form of fascism, for aiding fascism due to its confrontation with the ‘communist’ parties.”
[21] The Alianza Obrera (Worker’s Alliance) was a pact made by various Spanish labour forces and parties between December 1933 and October 1934, originally to confront the counterrevolutionary measures of the new centre-right government. After the November 1933 elections, Alejandro Lerroux’s Partido Radical (Radical Party) came to power. The danger for the left and for the members of this pact was the incorporation into the government of the CEDA (Conference of Autonomous Right-wing Groups) led by Gil-Robles, who had links to the Catholic Church and promised to bring peace to the streets. Although originally the alliance held this defensive view, it ended up becoming more radical due to the internal dynamics of the PSOE and UGT under the new leadership of Largo Caballero.
[22] We are not defending diplomatic determinism. What we mean, as we say in our aforementioned book on Stalinism, is that the policy of the Comintern and all the ‘communist’ parties of the world was subordinated to the interests of the USSR as a capitalist state. The various shifts in its international policy to the ‘left’, the so-called Third Period policy, and the Popular Front policy are defended with different justifications, but the explanatory axis is not these arguments but the interests of the Russian capitalist state.
[23] Cited by Juan Ignacio Ramos: De la revolución de Octubre al triunfo del estalinismo (From the October Revolution to the triumph of Stalinism), available at revolucionrusa.net
[24] Georgi Dimitrov: Actitud que ha de adoptarse hacia la democracia burguesa (1935) (Attitude Towards Bourgeois Democracy, from: Unity of the Working Class against Fascism, 1935)
[25] Citation taken from Juan Ignacio Ramos: Los años decisivos. Teoría y práctica del Partido Comunista de España. Fundación Federico Engels, 2012, Madrid, pp. 202-203. (The decisive years. Theory and practice of the Communist Party of Spain).
[26]A contemporary academic historian whose work justifies the positions of the PCE while attempting to separate them from the orders of Moscow. The full interview conducted for the documentary, ‘La historia del PCE – Fernando Hernández Sánchez. Entrevista completa Parias de la Tierra (Cámara A)’ can be viewed on YouTube.
[27] Juan Ignacio Ramos: op. cit.
[28] Ibidem
[29] For more information on the class struggle in Spain in the 1930s and the actions of the counterrevolutionaries, see Sobre la revolución y contrarrevolución en la región española (On the Revolution and Counter-Revolution in the Spanish Region) at barbaria.net.
[30] E. H. Carr: The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War. Pantheon Books, 1984, New York, pp. 86-87 See on:
https://archive.org/details/cominternspanish0000carr/page/86/mode/2up?q=%22to+comrade+caballero%22
[31] Grandizo Munis survived fleeing the “Model” prison in Barcelona, taking advantage of the entrance of Franco’s troops in the city in January 1939. He was sentenced to death by the Stalinist and Republican thugs, and his guards had the order to kill him upon the Francoists’ arrival. However, the confusion allowed him to get away.
[32] For further detail on the PCE’s political positions during the 1940s and 50s and the repression within the party we recommend Paul Preston’s biography of Santiago Carrillo: El zorro rojo, Debolsillo (The Red Fox); and Joan Estruch Tobella: El PCE en la clandestinidad 1939-1956, Siglo XXI (The PCE in clandestinity)
[33] In a report Quiñones is accused of working for the “enemy” and thought of possibly collaborating with the British as he was seen at times smoking British tobacco instead of black.
[34] Carlos Fernández Rodríguez: Los otros camaradas. El PCE en los orígenes del franquismo (1939-1945). Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2020, Zaragoza. (The other comrades. The PCE in the origins of Francoism (1939-1945)).
[35] Ibid., p. 948