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Communist Self-Witness About Spain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2024

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(a) The brief account of events in Spain since 1931, given on earlier pages, shows the vivid contrast between the weakness of the Republican-Socialist Government of 1931-1933 and the strength of the Republican Government of 1936.

(b) It would be incredible blindness for anyone in the working class or on the side of democracy and liberty, not to see what made this change possible.

(c) It was the developing strength of the working class as a whole; and this, in turn, was made possible by the developing strength of the Communist Party, and the triumph of its policy of unity and resolute class-struggle.

(d) As in other countries, the leadership of the Socialist Party was hostile to the Communist Party, hostile to a policy of class-struggle, filled with illusions of a peaceful, democratic constitutionalism.

(e) This led to the policy of holding back and even repressing the militant struggle of the rank and file in 1933.

(Spain, by Emile Bums, published by the Communist Party of Great Britain, page 11.)

The italics are those of the pamphlet. I am writing this not as a politician, nor in the interest of politics, but solely in the interests of the poor and of peace.

1. I need not point out that this honest self-witness of the Communist Party dispenses us from the almost impossible task of finding out the truth about the alleged terrorism on one side or the other. For the moment the only available evidence is of one side about the other; in other words, it is admittedly the weakest of all evidence.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1936 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Are we still accurate in calling it “the present Government”? Has it not resigned in favour of the Spanish United Front?

2 The present writer could hardly believe his eyes when he read this statement in the pamphlet.