The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

It is remarkable to see that the GIC implicitly abandoned the analysis that had been set out in its 1934 Theses on
Bolshevism, and since adopted by the whole council communist movement. These Theses (see chapter 7) held
that the Russian revolution was a bourgeois revolution, because it had been drowned by the peasantry and took
place in a backward country. Spain was still a backward country, so did that mean that the only ‘revolution’ on
the agenda would be ‘bourgeois and ‘anti-feudal’? Did the insurrection of July 1936 take place in the context of
a bourgeois revolution?
In response to different ‘councilist’ groups who defended this conception, the GIC forcefully declared that only
the proletarian revolution was on the agenda, in Spain as everywhere else:
“The epoch where such a (bourgeois) revolution was possible is completed. In 1848, one could still apply this
schema, but now the situation has completely changed... It is not any longer the struggle between the rising
bourgeoisie and feudalism which predominates, but on the contrary the struggle between the proletariat and
monopoly capital”. 1042
The article quoted, which was a response to a tendency existing within the GIC, noted that it was false to talk of
‘feudalism’ in Spain. There existed a powerful Spanish bourgeoisie at the head of capitalist production, on both
sides of the ‘military front’: “In Spain also a powerful bourgeoisie has dominated for a long time... It is
monopoly capital which dominates the whole situation in Spain. In Spain, there is capitalist production, and not
only in industrial Catalonia but also in all the other regions”. 1043
To talk of a ‘bourgeois revolution’ thus created dangerous ambiguities: “Such a position is false and dangerous
for our class”. 1044 If some ‘councilist’ groups-with ‘good intentions’ described the war in Spain as an antiproletarian
‘bourgeois revolution’, the better to denounce the Popular Front, some Social Democratie or stalinist
organisations employed the same phraseology to call for an ‘anti-feudal and ‘progressive’ fight under the flag of
the Republican bourgeoisie. And finally the dichotomy made between a pseudo-feudalism, supported by Franco
and the fascist powers, and the ‘rising’ democratic bourgeoisie ended up in the same misleading opposition
between ‘democracy’ and ‘fascism’.
‘Anti-fascist front’ or ‘proletarian revolution’?
The GIC very clearly rejected any identification of the events in Spain with a struggle between fascism and
democracy. July 1936, at the beginning of the civil war, was not a confrontation between two fractions of the
dominant class (‘republicans’ and ‘fascists’) but between two classes: the exploited class of the workers and poor
peasants and the whole of the equally reactionary ruling class:
“ [the] struggle which has raged since 17 th July in Spain is not a struggle between fascism and democracy, nor a
struggle between the Popular Front government and insurgent militias. It is a struggle between revolution and
Spanish counter-revolution, between on one side, the workers of industry and of the country supported by the
1042 ‘Lessen uit Spanje. Antwoord op discussie-artikel’, in: PIC, No. 6, March 1937.
For Cajo Brendel, Spain in 1936 underwent a ‘bourgeois revolution’ and could not do anything else: “...the Spanish
revolution cannot take the classical form of the French revolution in 1789. This ‘bourgeois’ revolution must be made
without the support of the bourgeoisie and, in a sense, against it. The working class becomes in a sense the executor of a
still-born revolution: although led by the workers this revolution does not change its character; it is destined to eliminate the
feudal layers and assure the rise of capitalism.” [Cajo Brendel and Henri Simon, De l’anti-franquisme à l’après-franquisme
– illusions politiques et lutte de classe, pamphlet ‘Echanges et Mouvement’, Paris 1979.] Cajo Brendel wrote in Dutch a
relevant history on ‘revolution and conterrevolution in Spain’: Revolutie en contrarevolutie in Spanje. Een analyse (Baarn:
Het Wereldvenster, 1977).
A French historian, recently, compared the war in Spain to the American Civil War (1861-1865) and/or to the Mexican
Revolution (1910-1940). [B. Bennassar, La guerre d’Espagne et ses lendemains (Paris: Perrin, 2004), p. 7.]
1043 Idem.
1044 ‘Het anarchisme en de organisatie van de revolutie’, in: PIC, No. 5, March 1937.
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