failures of spain and dauve

Quote:

This non-antagonistic situation was connected with the absence of a "party", an absence which weighed heavily on events, preventing the antagonism from ripening and bursting later."

I don't think that Dauve's argument is correct to link the 'lack of antagonism' (which I can't really see to be honest - there seems to have been a fair bit of class antagonism) to the lack of a party. I do however think the lack of coherent libertarian socialist party in the Spanish civil war was a decisive factor in the failure of the revolution. I don't think that can be denied. The lessons of the turmoil within the FAI and their lack of political clarity and bullshit ideas are all too obvious.

For various reasons, the revolutionary analyses of fascism and antifascism, and in particular the analysis of the Spanish Civil War which is a more complex example, are ignored, misunderstood, or regularly distorted. At best, they are considered as an idealist perspective; at worst, as an indirect support of fascism. Note, they say how the PCI helped Mussolini by refusing to take fascism seriously, and especially by not allying itself with the democratic forces; or how the KPD allowed Hitler to come to power while treating the SPD as the principal enemy. In Spain, on the contrary, one has an example of resolute antifascist struggle, which might have succeeded if it hadn't been for the deficiencies of the Stalinists - socialists - anarchists (cross out the appropriate names). These statements are based on a distortion of the facts.

The revolutionary critique of these events does not arrive at an "all or nothing" conclusion, as if one insisted on fighting only for "the revolution" and only at the side of the purest and toughest communists. One must struggle, we are told, for reforms when it is not possible to make the revolution; a well-led struggle for reforms prepares the way for the revolution: who can do more, can do less; but who cannot do less, cannot do more; who does not know how to defend himself, will not know how to attack, etc. All these generalities are missing the point. The polemic among Marxists, since the Second International, is not concerned with the necessity or worthlessness of communist participation in reformist struggles, which are in any case a reality. It is a matter of knowing if a given struggle places the workers under the control (direct or indirect) of Capital and in particular of its State, and what position the revolutionaries must adopt in this case. For a revolutionary, a "struggle" (a word leftists delight in) has no value in itself; the most violent actions have often ended in constituting parties and unions which have subsequently proved to be enemies of communism. (italics mine – CW)

The workers' struggle, even for reformist goals, creates difficulties for Capital and moreover constitutes the necessary experience for the proletariat to prepare itself for revolution. The struggle prepares the future: but this preparation can lead in two directions-nothing is automatic - it can just as easily stifle as strengthen the communist movement. Under these conditions it's not sufficient to insist on the "autonomy" of the workers' actions. Autonomy is no more a revolutionary principle than "planning" by a minority. The revolution no more insists on democracy than on dictatorship.
Only by carrying out certain measures can the proletarians retain control of the struggle. If they limit themselves to reformist action, sooner or later the struggle will escape from their control and be taken over by a specialised organ of the syndical type, which may call itself a union or a "committee of the base". Autonomy is not a revolutionary virtue in itself. Any form of organisation depends on the content of the goal for which it was created. The emphasis cannot be put on the self-activity of the workers, but on the communist perspective, the realisation of which alone effectively allows working class action to avoid falling under the leadership of traditional parties and unions. The content of the action is the determining criterion: the revolution is not just a matter of what the "majority" wants. To give priority to workers' autonomy leads to a dead end.

Workerism is sometimes a healthy response, but is inevitably catastrophic when it becomes an end in itself. Workerism tends to conjure away the decisive tasks of the revolution. In the name of workers' "democracy" it confines the proletarians to the capitalist enterprise with its problems of production (not visualising the revolution as the destruction of the enterprise as such). And workerism mystifies the problem of the State. At best, it re-invents "revolutionary syndicalism."

The complexity of the war in Spain comes from this double aspect; a civil war (proletariat vs. capital) transforming itself into a capitalist war (the proletarians supporting rival capitalist State structures in both camps).

After having given every facility to the "rebels" to prepare themselves, the Republic was going to negotiate and/or submit, when the proletarians rose up against the fascist coup d'etat, preventing its success in half of the country. The Spanish War would not have been unleashed without this authentic proletarian insurrection (it was more than a spontaneous outbreak). But this alone does not suffice to characterise the whole Spanish War and subsequent events. It defines only the first moment of the struggle, which was effectively a proletarian uprising.

After having defeated the fascists in a large number of cities, the workers held power. Such was the situation immediately after their insurrection. But what did they proceed to do with this power? Did they hand it back to the Republican State, or did they use it to go further in the direction of communism? They put their trust in the legal government, i.e. in the existing, capitalist State. All their subsequent actions were carried out under the direction of this State. This is the central point. It followed that in its armed struggle against Franco and in its socio-economic transformations, the whole movement of the Spanish proletarians was placing itself squarely within the framework of the capitalist State and could only be capitalist in nature. It's true attempts to go further took place in the social sphere (we shall speak further of this); but these attempts remained hypothetical so long as the capitalist State was maintained. The destruction of the State is the necessary (but not sufficient) condition for communist revolution. In Spain, real power was exercised by the State and not by organisations, unions, collectives, committees, etc. The proof of this is that the mighty CNT had to submit to the PCE (very weak prior to July 1936). One can verify this by the simple fact that the State was able to use its power brutally when required (May 1937). There is no revolution without the destruction of the State. This "obvious" Marxist truth, forgotten by 99% of the "Marxists" emerges once more from the Spanish tragedy.

Yeah but it's also a phrase used by those who like to maintain some ambiguity on the possibility of a non-bourgeois state (if they don't say that explicitly).