Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

OBJECTIVITY AND LIBERAL SCHOLARSHIP
izations that had now disappeared, is well described by the general secretary of the
Peasant Federation, Julio Mateu: "Such is the sympathy for us [that is, the
Communist party] in the Valencia countryside that hundreds and thousands offarmers
would join our party if we were to let them. These farmers .. .love our party like a
scared thing ... they [sayl 'The Communist Party is our party.' Comrades, what emotion
the peasants display when they utter these words" (cited in Bolloten, p. 86).
There is some interesting speculation about the backgrounds for the writing of this
very important book in H.R. Southworth, Le my the de fa croisade de Franco (Rueda
Iberica, Paris, 1964; Spanish edition, same publisher, 1963).
The Communist headquarters in Valencia had on the wall two posters: "Respect
the property of the small peasant" and "Respect {he property of {he small industrialist"
(Borkenau, The Spanish Cockpit, p. 117). Actually, it was the rich farmer as well
who sought protection from the Communists, whom Borkenau describes as constituting
the extreme right wing of the Republican forces. By early 1937, according to
Borkenau, the Communist party was "to a large extent ... the party of the military and
administrative personnel, in the second place the party of the petty bourgeoisie and
cerrain well-to-do peasanr groups, in the third place the party of the employees, and
only in the fourth place the party of the industrial workers" (p. 192). The party also
anracted many policy and army officers. The police chief in Madrid and chief of
intelligence, fo r example, were party members. Tn general, the party, which had been
insignificant before the revolution, "gave urban and rural middle classes a powerful
86 access oflife and vigour" as it defended them from the revolutionary fo rces (Bolloten,
op. cit. , p. g6). Gerald Brenan describes the situation as follows, in The Spanish
Labyrinth (i 943; reprinted Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 325:
Unable to draw to themselves the manual workers, who remained
firmly fixed in their unions, the Communists found themselves the
refuge for all those who had suffered from the excesses of the
Revolution of who feared where it might lead them. Well-to-do
Catholic orange-growers in Valencia, peasants in Catalonia, shopkeepers
and business men, Army officers and Government officials
enrolled in their ranks .... Thus [in CataloniaJ one had a strange and
novel situation: on the one side stood the huge compact proletariat
of Barcelona with its long revolutionary tradition, and on the other
the white-collar workers and petite bourgeoisie of the city, organized
and armed by the Communist party against it.
Actually, the situation that Brenan describes is not as strange a one as he suggests. It
is, rather, a natural consequence of Bolshevik elitism that the "Red bureaucracy"
should act as a counterrevolutionary force except under the conditions where its present
or future representatives are attempting to seize power for themselves, in the
name of the masses whom they pretend to represent.
66 Bolloten, op. cit. , p. 189. The legalization of revolutionary actions already undertaken
and completed recalls the behavior of the "revolutionary vanguard" in the
Soviet Union in 1918. Cf. Arthur Rosenhurg, A History of Bolshevism (1932; repuh-