"Towards a Fresh Revolution" by The Friends of Durruti Group (Collaboration and Class Struggle)

Collaboration and Class Struggle

In Spain, as has generally been the case in every country, the workers’ movement has shown two tendencies. One, the collaborationist one, and the other that admits no truck whatsoever with the enemy.

In this country of ours, it has been socialism with its trade-union offshoot, the UGT that has played the classic role of reformists. It is a refuge for renegade workers, even of infiltrators into workers’ organisations whose sole purpose is to yoke the proletariat to the cart of the bourgeoisie.

The statements made by Indalecio Prieta during the Red biennium, on the occasion of the railway mens’ strike, encapsulate the essence of collaboration ism. They are notorious.

“I am a minister first, and then a socialist” don Inda stated then.

The Spanish revolution has suffered because of the reformists’ pernicious influence on its direction. There has been no willingness to interpret the social, class meaning of the July happenings.

The class struggle that the CNT has always preached has been relegated to a secondary position by a series of issues that have proved enormously prejudicial to the course of the revolutions. Noting this relegation we must not only deplore this disfiguration of the revolution, but also in organic terms the ground lost through the failure to keep strictly to line of revolution on a class terrain and through having trampled Revolutionary Syndicalism into the ground.

The unions are the organs that genuinely articulate the workers’ class feeling in their eternal battle with capitalism. If we relegate the unions to a secondary position, it follows naturally that the interests of the proletariat will be prejudiced.

Collaborationism is to be deplored at all times. There must be no collaboration with capitalism whether outside the bourgeois state or from within the government itself. As producers our place is in the unions, reinforcing the only bodies that ought to survive a revolution headed by the workers.

Class struggle is no obstacle to workers continuing at present to fight on in the battlefields and working in the war industries. But it is imperative to keep it in mind that we proceed to each new initiative with a class sense, giving the unions the priority that is their due.

There must be no other economic body outside the unions to restrict their powers. And the State cannot be retained in the face of the unions - let alone bolstered up by our own forces. The fight against capitalism goes on. Inside our own territory there is still a bourgeoisie connected with the international bourgeoisie. The problem is now what it has been for years.

Let us keep the unions true to themselves. Let us keep to the line mapped out by the CNT in its particular confrontation with our native bourgeoisie, as was always the norm up to 19 July.

Collaborationists are allies of the bourgeoisie. Individuals who advocate such relations have no feeling for the class struggle, nor have they the slightest regard for the unions.

Never must we accept the consolidation of our enemy’s positions.

The enemy must be restricted. If ever faced with a hiatus we must never allow that social deviation to develop into a position of open assistance to capital.

There can be absolutely no common ground between exploiters and exploited. Which shall prevail, only battle can decide. Bourgeoisie or workers. Certainly not both of them at once.

The working class holds the future in its hands. We pariahs have nothing to lose and, on the contrary, we can win our emancipation which is the destiny of the family of workers.

Let us break the shackles. Let us strengthen our unions. Let us keep the spirit of class struggle alive.