The Only Class Weapon

Against the “Industrialization” of Corpses on Military Fronts – For the Resumption of Class Struggles!

The more events advance, the thinner the ranks of proletarians who remain loyal to their class, the stronger becomes the business – within the masses – of all enemy political currents. Today, even more than in 1914, since the compulsory conscription of that time in the imperialist armies has been replaced by volunteering in the “anti‑fascist militias” and by the crusade at the head of which are to be found those same forces that worked to crush the revolutionary proletariat in Germany, Italy, China and all countries.

Only a few of us that stood up against the raging enemy propaganda among the workers and until the last July, and we’re even fewer today to hold firmly to the banner of the proletariat while it’s precisely those who until yesterday collaborated, supported or sympathized with our effort which becomes the most influential champions in the defense of political conceptions against which we had together fought.

Reality is here, it follows its iron logic, implacable, it obeys the laws of the capitalist regime; the evolution of situations confirms it and, alas, no longer through a partial success of the enemy but with mountains of proletarian corpses that the bourgeoisie was able to lay on the ground by the thousands, and then tens of thousands, solely because it was able – as in 1914 – to make them believe that they were fighting for socialism and not for the bourgeois republic, to halt the reactionary attack and not laying down the ground, with their own lives, of the strengthening of the regime of capitalist oppression.

In even the most advanced ranks of the proletariat, today – as in 1914 – there’s no longer any discussion, it’s sabotage if one dares to examine the four months of intervention in the Spanish events, the uniform is that of “we march”, of “the enemy is there, one must fight, one must not hesitate”, reflection has become a crime and capitalism has reached the peak of its success; the proletariat, which can only defend itself and win on the condition that it understands how to build its own battlefront, considers today that regrouping to meditate means missing an opportunity of its success.

And thus the facts are here: not one of them allows it to continue, all of them are a tragic confirmation of teachings already from the last century and from which one cannot deviate without crossing the barricade of social struggle and becoming agents, conscious or unconscious, of the capitalist enemy.

Here is what Senator Morizet, one of Franco’s many accomplices, wrote (in the L’Humanité issue of November 4th 1936): “It’s not a question of two forces that are in the presence of each other and more or less equal, but of a paltry number of rebellious soldiers and military men, some 20,000 men fighting against a people of 22 million men… In truth there are but 5,000 legionaries in total…. Franco has from 6,000 to 7,000 Moroccans. It is necessary to add 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers who were forced to march under the threat of the revolver. You will tell me that this small number of soldiers is compensated by the military quantity of the officers. Now the inability of the Spanish officers is universally known…. No, it’s not them that are capable of doing what they do, it is 200 to 300 German and Italian airmen, it is German and Italian technicians who slaughter the Spanish people and destroy towns and villages”.

So, 200 and 300 airmen can get the of hundreds of thousands of armed workers. If this were the case, all that would be left for us to do would be to proclaim the proletarian flag as permanently buried since its struggle is clearly forever doomed. Since, on the terrain of military competition, the working class will never, absolutely never be able to rival the enemy who builds colossal instruments while the revolutionary proletarians are devoid of any possibility in this field. What is more, never before as in Spain at present have the proletarians been so bereft of weapons, neither in Russia during the struggle for power, nor in Germany, nor in Italy, nor in any country. But the proletariat not provided with a militaty army – since it is impossible for it to have one before the conquest of power – was itself an army capable of winning in Russia, fighting in other countries and despite provisional defeats remaining the army that history makes invincible and will surely win, solely because it represents the political expression of a social force that – when the situation reaches the climatic and inevitable point of the maturation of the contrasts on which the capitalist regime is based – will shake, right down to its foundations, the present society, and the capitalist cop whether it be called Mussolini, Stalin, Caballero or Blum, who would give the order to his formidable military apparatus to pull on the weakly armed masses would see his whole army smashed. No, the Spanish tragedy is the most painful of the confirmations of Marxism since it proves that, to nail the proletariat to the enemy front, to annihilate it as a class, Azaña’s deception was not enough, but it was necessary to gradually reach to the extreme socialist left, to the POUM and the anarchists.

The poisoning of enemy propaganda hit the proletariat full force. Even the most advanced militants, until last July, had no more hesitation: democracy makes the bed for fascism. Today they, to those of us who urge them to analyze the events that give grim and new confirmation to this formulation, reply, “we march”. But really, who is “marching” in Spain today if not the fascist hordes, piling up thousands and thousands of proletarian victims? Yes, even in Spain, democracy makes the bed of fascism: if it has annexed the POUM and anarchists this is solely because that was the only way capitalism in the country and internationally could carry out this gruesome trick to fool the workers.

It’s from the very bowels of a Proletarian Front government that the fascist attack is fertilized. Republican and socialist leaders, anarchist and POUM, know five days in advance that the offensive will be unleashed: complete silence in the face of the masses who, surprised and directionless, have in spite of everything the strength to repel the attack, especially in the industrial centers. The masses are on the class front, they are invincible, they would have won if there had been a party to maintain them on that line and lead them to victory. The party was not there and the inevitable was produced; all other political forces acting within the masses – in a situation of heightened affairs – were dragged into the inevitable precipitation of their political role, they were progressively won over by the enemy and, like Noske, although with different forms dependent on the new situation, have betrayed then by collaborating with the bourgeois government.

Two classes, two instruments, two class paths. To the two‑faced enemy of the Popular Front, which create fertile ground for fascism, which, aware of the date of the attack keeps silent so that the masses may be more surprised and unprepared, the proletariat responds with its class weapon, the strike. Having thwarted this, the danger remains that the masses will find their way again. And so arises the colossal mystification of territorial military fronts: everyone to the front to stop the attack and the proletariat is uprooted from its class terrain – in the social struggle and especially in the climatic moments, half‑measures are impossible – is thrown into the class terrain of the enemy. And the bourgeoisie which, superficially, appears much weaker than the enemy, are actually the arbiter of situations because its enemy, the proletariat, no longer exists as its own class. The latter has the weapons but, just like in 1914, in different forms but with the same substance, it employs them not for its own class, but for the enemy, in its belt, under its direction, a mere appendage to its State. The capitalist military and social front is opposed to the class front in both the countryside and proletarian urban sprawl. Both at once is impossible and once again one has to choose either one or the other: bourgeoisie or proletariat.

The deep reasons for our disagreement with the Fraction minority rightly lie in the fact that these comrades believed that we should penetrate and even accredit among the masses the front that was and remains that of the enemy. The ideological and brutal rupture that was inevitable will be able – we fervently hope – to keep the Fraction united, on the sole condition that these comrades meditate on the evolution of the situation: reflection will only heal the aberration.

Once the workers joined the enemy front, the massacre of the proletariat was inevitable, and this in the case regardless of whether there’s a fascist or Republican victory: in the two hypotheses the one that emerges strengthened is the enemy regime, as in 1914, in the countries where proletarians were slaughtered in the name of the struggle against Czarism as in the others in the name of the struggle against Germanic militarism.

The events seem to indicate that Caballero, the POUM and anarchists are Franco’s accomplices toward the outlet of a right‑wing victory and not that the latter is – as in April 1931¹ and February 1936²– the accomplice of Caballero and co. for a victory of the democratic counter-revolution.

Unable to discuss the reality of events, the proletarians who until yesterday were still with us fighting against the two‑faced enemy, of fascism and anti‑fascism, only face of the proletariat and its class, gets from the heroism of the Spanish workers the pretext to persist in the path that leads to massacre. In different times this was called the industrialization of corpses. Demagogy once again proves to be the dirtiest enemy of the proletariat. Indeed, what do these admirable examples of the Spanish workers mean? This and only this: that despite the most heroic resistance and struggle the workers are defeated. So it’s a definitive argument not for, but against the thesis that opposes ours.

Although in unclear forms – and this because of its internal situation – but subsequently with unequivocal expression the Fraction defended the class approach and fought for it! In emigration as on the ground, where clear threats were made against its delegates by Franco’s POUM accomplices. On this ground alone the struggle will be continued.

The fiercest struggle of the proletarians on the current territorial front, which is the enemy’s front, is the cruelest and most desperate of the workers’ defeats, in either scenario, the victory of Franco or the Popular Front. Capitalism piles up corpses today in Madrid: if Franco enters tomorrow, he will have a free field in the face of a beheaded and bloodied mass, and the same would be the case in the opposite case of a republican success.

In 1936 the sinister vocables of 1914 resume course in the ranks of the proletariat, as do those of interventionism and non‑interventionism. In different forms the substance is the same as in 1914. A new victory for capitalism, but the extreme extent of its triumph is a sure symptom of approaching revolutionary storms: from the blood of the Spanish proletarians, from the ignition of the imperialist front will flow the insurrectionary battles of the working class. The cemeteries that Franco and his socialist, Stalinist, POUMist, and anarchist accomplices have opened in Spain, bury not the proletariat and its cause, but the forces that are its enemies and strangers: the proletarian victims have fallen to bury all the enemies of the working class, they will fertilize the cadres of the International, of the revolution in all countries, they carry this flag: our Fraction bears on its shoulders this tremendous responsibility.

1. Reference to April 14, 1931, the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic, a trick where the bourgeoisie used the republicans to fool the workers away from truly proletarian demands during its mighty unrest. ↩︎
2. Reference to February 16, 1936, when the Popular Front defeated the parliamentary right‑wing in the elections, again making workers rely on the bourgeois parliament over real proletarian struggle. ↩︎