The political situation in Spain

              SOCIALIST CORRESPONDENCE.
23rd Dec. 1937.
The Political Situation in Spain.
by J. Calvert, member of the E.C. of  P.O.U.M.
The Central Committee of the C.P. of Spain held a conference in Valencia from Nov. 15th to 20th. This conference took place at a time when the struggle between the Prieto faction of the Socialist Party and the C.P. had become so acute that neither side was able to keep it secret any longer. Almost every speech made at the conference reflected that conflict, although the speeches were directed primarily against the P.O.U.M. The furious and hysterical way in which these speeches were made, shows that the activities of the C.P. against the P.O.U.M. have not brought the desired results.
At the same time as the C.P. was meeting thus, Prieto renewed his attacks on the important positions held by the C.P. within the State. Alvarez del Vayo was dismissed from his post as General Commissar of the Army; his closest collaborators in the Propaganda Department of the Army were also dismissed, and forbidden to take up any other posts in the Army. As the C.P. leaders must be afraid of also being removed from the posts which they hold in the police, it is not impossible that they will make a last effort to lead a final blow against the P.O.U.M. before it is too late.
Prieto and the C.P. have the same objectives. Both wish to prevent the revolutionary elements from advancing again. Unitedly they have delivered a serious blow to the proletarian revolution. Today, however, they think that the time has come to reap the fruits of their betrayal of the working-class and either of them is prepared to fight the other in order to capture the leadership of the state. They are of the opinion that the time has come when an open dictatorship in Republican Spain, in contrast to the present veiled one, could be established. Both of them are now looking for allies which later on they can betray and persecute. During the whole time of persecution against t the P.O.U.M. and C.N.T. workers, Prieto kept himslef well in the background in such a way that he appeared to have nothing to do with these persecutions. He has been holding a card up his sleeve all the time, so that he can play it at a given time, when he can blame the C.P. for having exercised diplomatic pressure through the Russian government, which has imposed the condition of the suppression of the Spanish revolution  It would be excellent for Prieto if he could start his dictatorship by making good a lot of those crimes which he has committed together with the C.P. He is conscious of the simple way in which the masses  think, and as his friends have kept his name carefully from all connection with these persecutions, he thinks he will be able to pass the blame for them on to those who, in a short time, will be his enemies. A regime which began in that way and which recieved the more or less hidden support from foreign "democratic" powers, and which would excuse itself with "necessities of war" would find support among a great section of public opinion, which has become tired of what is called  the "internal struggle", or at the least would be tolerated.
Is Prieto, in the service of France and Britain, looking for the possibility of an armistice, so that those powers may consider him as absolutely indispensible ? That is indeed possible, and almost certain. The persecutions and the destruction of the revolutionary forces in Spain has been carried out jointly by reformists and stalinists, because it was a job in which the masters of these two allies were interested; the bourgeois democracies, and Stalinism.
Undoubtedly the moment has come when the ways of these two allies are parting. This has become obvious in Spain and abroad. Dimitrov's article which has jarred so much on the nerves of the French Socialists and helped their decision to break off negotiations for a united party, is closely related to the struggle between the reformists and the C.P. in Spain. They are part of the strategy applied by both sides, and we can assume that it will come to a struggle between these two forces, to a struggle for the spoils, - a struggle which, because of the prevailing situation in Spain, will assume its sharpest form.