II
WHAT ARE THE SPANISH PEOPLE FIGHTING FOR?
The Spanish revolution is a national, peoples', anti-fascist revolution. Winning the war means simultaneous success for the national, people's, anti-fascist revolution. This revolution has two central objectives: the defeat of fascism and the establishment of a democratic republic. One hinges upon the other. There can be no democratic republic without defeat of Franco. And without the rallying cry of the democratic republic, there could be no such all-embracing, as exists today in the Peoples' Front, line-up of the vast majority of the population of Spain against Franco.
Why are the Spanish people fighting for the democratic republic?
This demand arises from the necessity of (completing) carrying through the long overdue bourgeois democratic revolution.
Where in France the major work of the bourgeois democratic revolution was carried out in the 1789-1793 period, twentieth-century Spain has not solved the task of destroying feudalism.
The agrarian question was handed down to the Peoples' Front government to settle. Land to the peasants who till the soil! This, the only answer to the problem of the land-hungry, starving agricultural population means the abolition of the aristocrats' and Church domination of the countryside, "of medievalism, of monarchism, clerical fanaticism and bigotry as well as the Inquisition of the Jesuits."
Abolition of feudal relations in the countryside opens up a whole new era of free and unfettered economic and political development throughout the peninsula. For so long as the reactionary landlord castes and the privileged nobility dominate the peasantry and agriculture—the main industry—the entire country is restricted in its further expansion. A poverty stricken hinterland affords no market for home industry.
The Peoples' Front government which took power in February 1936 realized the immensity of its job in solving the agrarian question. It set about doing it slowly (too slowly). But under the relentless pressure of the peasantry and the class-conscious proletariat (led in the first place by the Communist Party) the land was being given over to those who tilled it.
The Fascist rebellion was inspired because the landed aristocracy, the swollen rich, landed Catholic Church, and the big bourgeoisie which was tied up with these two groups, sought to prevent the completion of the democratic revolution on the land.
All the forces on the side of the democratic revolution—the peasantry, the proletariat, the city middle-class, and the nontrustified, native capitalists lined up with the Peoples' Front. Backing Franco were the aforementioned economically reactionary groups.
The nature of the fascist rebellion against the regularly elected democratic republic of February 1936 compels the republic in the course of the war to complete the democratic revolution.
The land of the Rebel landlords and of the Church has been confiscated by government decree and turned over to the peasantry—who are given every aid—tools, mules, electricity, seed, irrigation, scientific advice—to stimulate production.
So too with the factories of the big bourgeoisie, who had to flee when their counter-revolution failed in the big industrial centers, Catalonia, Valencia, Madrid. These are now government-owned, and worker-controlled.
It becomes clear that should the people be victorious, a new type of democratic republic, unlike the usual democratic republic, will be set up.
How will it differ?
- Fascism will never be able to enjoy the freedom it has in France or the U. S. where it makes use of the bourgeois democracy and the rights granted under it to destroy democracy and establish a completely arbitrary rule. The armed force of the people's will which is now suppressing fascism will never allow it again to raise its head.
- The material basis of fascism will be destroyed in this republic. All the land, all enterprises belonging to participants in the insurrection have already been confiscated.
- The new democracy cannot but be alien to all conservatism, for it possesses all the conditions necessary for its own further economic and political development, it provides the guarantees for further economic and political achievements by the working people of Spain.