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Title: Revolutionary War? Author: Free Earth Date: Winter 2000 Language: en Topics: Spanish Revolution, Spanish Civil War, debate Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20120312153411/http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/freeearth/spain_rev_war.html
During the Spanish revolution groups of anarchists criticised the
C.N.T. - F.A.I. for failing to fight a revolutionary war, since then
this argument has been taken up in such publications as 'Lessons of the
Spanish Revolution' and 'The Spanish Civil War: Anarchism in Action' .
As Camilo Berneri put it "The dilemma, war or revolution, has no
meaning. The only dilemma is this - either victory over Franco through
revolutionary war or defeat."[1]
In this essay I'm going to examine the case for revolutionary war but
crucially not from the perspective of revolution and counter-revolution
in the 'republican zone' but rather from the perspective of military
conflict raging throughout the country. In other words I'm not going to
be questioning the need for revolution but rather the practicality of
revolutionary war. I'll be doing this by giving a brief overview of the
war - as the facts speak for themselves.
The first fact it is important not to overlook is the considerable and
widespread support for fascism - in the elections of February 16th
4,000,000 votes went to the right wing parties and 4,700,000 for the
left - important to remember lest we overestimate the possibility that
Franco was going to be beset by mass troop desertions or popular
uprisings behind his lines.
When the coup began the General's victory in Old Castille and Navarre
was assured by the level of support for the reactionary movement in
those areas, the fall of Vigo and La Coruna in Galica along with Seville
, Cordoba, Granada and Cadiz in Anadulsia can be put down to the refusal
of the Republican government to arm the working class or as is more
useful and realistic the failures on the part of the libertarian left to
prepare for an event which could be seen to have been coming. Elsewhere
the putsch was suppressed, for instance, in Barcelona and Madrid where a
combination of the continued loyalty of elements of the State forces ,
the strength of the labour movement and the emergence of armed militias
saw off reaction. Arms were distributed be elements of the police and
army opposed to the rising, in Madrid further arms were secured by the
capture of Montana barracks on the 20th, while in Barcelona the C.N.T. -
F.A.I. seized arms depots on the 19th. Of great importance was the
failure of the rebelling generals to capture the Navy , whose crews
mutinied, slew their insurgent officers and blockaded the Straits of
Gibraltar. This prevented General Franco from moving his Army of Africa
to Spain and that was the fascist's main force General Mola's Army of
the North in northern Spain being far inferior to it . It was at this
point that foreign aid became of paramount importance, Franco appealed
for help from the Fascist governments of Portugal , Italy and Germany.
Soon German transport aircraft were airlifting his troops into Spain and
with the Italian bombers ending the blockade they were soon joined by
troopships. Furthermore supplies were reaching the Army of the North,
which had failed to capture Madrid, via Portugal. This is the point at
which the situation changes from one of street fighting with either
isolated military units being defeated by the militias or unarmed
workers unable to resist the uprising to one of full scale civil war.
The next months saw two offensives, the Army of the North took the city
of Irun thereby cutting the Basque areas off from France and the Army of
Africa pushed northward towards Madrid. Events in Irun are outlined in
'Spanish Civil War: Anarchism in Action' : "This lack of arms did not
only affect the Aragon front, Irun fell because of this shortage of
weapons. One reporter described it. "They fought to the last cartridge
(the workers of Irun). When they had no more ammunition they hurled
packs of dynamite. When the dynamite was gone they rushed forward
barehanded . . . while the sixty times stronger enemy butchered them
with their bayonets." [2]
By the first week of November the Army of Africa had reached Madrid but
crucially Russian arms in the form of 100 tanks and 50 fighter planes
along with crews to operate them as well as trucks and medical supplies
had arrived before them. The arrival of the Comintern's Army aka the
International Brigades further stiffened the defence of Madrid and
further internationalised the conflict as did that of Nazi Germany's
Condor Legion . The civil war was rapidly taking on the characteristics
of a proxy war between rival powers.
1937 was to see three Republican offensives as well as the conquest of
the Basque areas and Asturias by the Fascists . To take the latter
first, historian Gabriel Jackson describes the fall of Bilbao : " the
'Iron Ring' showed the same general weaknesses as did most of the
Republican fortifications. Its trenches formed a thin perimeter in the
hills outside the city, and in most areas there were only two lines, 200
to 300 yards apart . They stood on crests, with generally uncamouflaged
concrete visible to the enemy, without positions in depth on the
counterslope and without protection on the flanks.
Both political and military commentators at the time suspected treason
in the entire planning of the defense of Bilbao, but the errors in these
fortifications - as of those south of Madrid in October 1936 - could
just as well have arisen from the military inexperience of those who
designed them. In any case it is difficult to believe that Basque
engineers purposely planned a trench system which would be untenable for
their sons and brothers." [3]
The exact ins and outs of the Republic's defeats at Brunete, Belchite
and Teruel need not concern us - what is important is that we are now
talking about massive battles between two conventional armies with tens
of thousands of men and hundreds of tanks, artillery guns and aircraft .
By now the Popular Army had been formed, dominated by Communists,
officered by remnants of the pre-1936 Spanish Army as well as Russians
and armed by the Soviet Union. According to historian Paul Preston these
defeats demonstrated that "the sheer material superiority of the rebel
forces could always prevail over the courage of the loyalist troops."[4]
Franco followed up his victory at Teruel in Aragon by smashing through
republican lines with 100,000 troops, 200 tanks and complete command of
the air. In mid April 1938 they reached the sea and cut off Catalonia
from the rest of republican Spain. In late July they were poised 25
miles from the Republic's capital Valencia and the Republic lanced it's
final and fatal offensive establishing a bridgehead across the Ebro
trying to unite it's divided territory, according to Paul Preston "Five
hundred cannon fired an average of over 13,500 hundred rounds at them
every day for nearly four months ....Determined to smash the Republican
army, Franco gathered over 30,000 fresh troops with new German
equipment." [5]
The defining characteristic of the war was republican defeats partly due
to inexperience but primarily due to the greater foreign military
intervention on the "Nationalist" side - 100,000 Italians, 20,000
Portuguese , 5,000 Germans plus the latest in German military
technology - more than a match for Soviet supplies even when they were
not of Tsarist vintage. From 1937 onwards Franco with 200,000 more
troops than the Republicans was always able to meet any Republican
offensive with, fresh equipped reinforcements and was able to beat again
and again the Popular Army. Even if the Soviet Union had backed the
Popular Army to a far greater extent Franco would still have won as the
Condor Legion gave the fascists control of the air [6] - the Soviet
airforce being decidedly inferior and the rest of the Republic's planes
dating back to the First World War. O.K. that was the "Nationalist" army
versus the Popular army I'm not even going to argue against the notion
that anarchist militias, whom of course Vickers and Krupps were just
waiting to arm and who were going to be trained to operate tanks,
aircraft and artillery by divine inspiration, were capable of doing any
better or indeed fighting any kind of war without the Popular army let
alone against the Popular army and Franco - which is what a
"revolutionary war" would have meant.
Of course against this claim can be held up the legendary "People's War"
of various guerrilla armies which are indeed legend. However even the
most cursory examination of the history of guerrilla armies will show
that generally speaking guerrillas fall into two categories the ones
which are the Imperialist proxies and the dead ones. To take for example
the famous World War 2 partisans of Yugoslavia: "the main Russian aid
arrived in the terminal stages of the war when the Partisan forces were
moving over from guerrilla to frontal warfare. According to Soviet
sources this totalled 20,528 rifles , 68,819 machine guns, light machine
guns and automatic weapons , 3,797 anti-tank rifles , 3,364 mortars ,
170 anti-tank guns , 898 varied types of guns, 491 aircraft, 65 tanks,
1,329 radio stations, 7 base hospitals, 4 surgical field hospitals and
other items of various kinds." the extent of British support is harder
to reckon but "During 1944 'something like' 9,000 tons of supplies were
dropped to Partisans in Yugoslavia , including 100,000 rifles, 50,000
machine guns, 1,400 mortars and one million mortar bombs and
handgrenades, and 100 million rounds of small arms ammunition. This did
not include supplies that went by sea, among which were food and medical
materials, trucks and quantities of fuel, as well as 107 tanks and 346
planes , a number of landing craft and small boats. In addition two
squadrons of Partisan pilots were trained by the RAF. An aspect of
Allied aid which was immensely helpful to Tito - and gratefully
acknowledged by him - was the evacuation of sick and wounded to Italy,
and their treatment in special hospitals which the British established
for them." [7] Likewise with virtually every other successful "People's
Army" - all are in reality attached to an Imperialist life support
system.
The truth is there can hardly be any kind of revolutionary war, apart
from the amply demonstrated (and I would have thought obvious) near
total monopoly on organised violence enjoyed by the State, warfare
inherently requires a authoritarian hierarchical organisation - because
no one is going to vote for their certain death (e.g. should some unit
need to be sacrificed in a diversion) because decisions can only be made
in secret and because those decisions have to have trained specialists
to make them . An exception to this would be limited guerrilla warfare
and urban insurrections ( I wouldn't call it war ) which can be fought
on a revolutionary basis but the Spanish Civil War was well beyond that.
Not only is such a thing as a revolutionary war highly improbable I
would go so far as to say that revolution and war are irreconcilable
pole opposites. I may be wrong about that but I'm not wrong in saying
that the dilemma of how to fight a revolutionary war was a very real one
and until it is answered arguments to the effect that this should have
been done or that should have been done or that this shows the failings
of anarcho-syndicalism and so on are treating the revolution and
counter-revolution behind the frontine as if it happened in a vacuum or
in some sort of alternative dimension where there wasn't a war going on.
Despite this these criticisms are to be welcomed, no organisation, form
of organisation, theory, period of revolutionary history or personality
should be treated as some sort of 'holy grail' but rather all should be
subject to a criticism and debate.
[1] Quoted in 'The Spanish Civil War 1936 - 1939' by Paul Preston page
126.
[2] 'The Spanish Civil War: Anarchism in Action' by Eddie Conlon page
17.
[3] 'A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War' by Gabriel Jackson page
128.
[4] 'The Spanish Civil War 1936 - 1939' by Paul Preston page 149.
[5] Ibid. page 156.
[6] If you don't want to take my word for it take that of the fighter
Francisco 'El Quico' Sabate who "wanted to become a pilot, as he
realized that the Air Force would prove to be the most decisive military
arm of the war. "
The training was in the Soviet Union and the Air Force was completely
Communist dominated "and to become a pilot it was necessary to be a
member of the JSU (United Young Socialists) , or at the very least have
a special recommendation as a persona grata. El Quico thought at one
time of joining the JSU, if there was no other way; after all , as he
said , 'the habit does not make the monk'." ('Sabate: Guerrilla
Extraordinary' by Antonio Tellez page 30.)
[7] 'Tito: A Biography' by Phyllis Auty page 222.