The Spanish Revolution. Vol. 2, no. 6

              Vol. II N.° 6   Barcelona, March 31, 1937   Please reprint
THE SPANISH REVOLUTION
BULLETIN OF THE WORKERS' PARTY OF MARXIST UNIFICATION OF SPAIN
P.O.U.M.
AGENTS FOR ENGLAND:
The I.L.P. 
The Marxist League. 
PRICE IN ENGLAND: 2d.
PRICE IN U.S.A.  .05
EDITORIAL OFFICE: "THE SPANISH REVOLUTION"
10, Rambla de los Estudios 
BARCELONA
CONTENTS
1: The Problem of Power. 2: The Workers Defend "La Batalla". 3: The Role of the Anarchists: Reformism; Revolution.  4: The P.O.U.M. and the Middle Class.  5: Trade Union Unity.  6: La Editorial Marxista.  7. News and Notes
ANDRES NIN
THE PROBLEM OF POWER
The fundamental ideas of Marx on the subject of power can be summarized in the following propositions:
1. The state is an instrument of coercion at the service of the dominant class with the object of oppressing the other classes.
2. While classes exist, the state exists and its abolition cannot be "agreed" upon or "decreed".
3. The proletariat, if it wants to defend its interests, must struggle for the conquest of power which it must utilize to create a new society without classes.
4. To break the resistence of the capitalists — the exploiting class will never renounce its privileges — and to undertake the organization of a new society on socialistic bases, the proletariat, on taking power, must temporarily install its class dictatorship. This period of transition between capitalism and communism is inevitable. Without it, the emancipation of the workers is impossible.
5. "The working class cannot limit itself to taking into its own hands the state machine and putting it into operation as it is for its own ends" but must destroy it, creating its own organs. (Example which can serve for orientation: the Paris Commune.)
6. With the disappearance of classes, the state, properly defined, disappears, yielding its place to purely administrative institutions. "A government of men is replaced by the administration of things."
7. In order that the working class can fullfil its historic mission, an indispensible condition is that it organize itself into a class party, independent of the others and with an independent class policy.
From these seven propositions, it developes that the political doctrine of Marxism is based on two fundamental ideas: the conquest of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The working class, in its struggle for its emancipation, does not hurl itself only against the economic force of the enemy class, but also against its political force. The conquest of political power is an indispensable condition of the socialist transformation. In September, 1920, the Italian workers occupied the factories; but as the power remained in the hands of the capitalists, they frustrated the revolution, which was rapidly advancing, and, as a consequence of this, created the necessary conditions for the rapid and victorious advance of fascism. In our country, as an answer to the military fascist rising, the workers in arms, occupied the factories, mines and shops, destroying the economic power of the capitalists; but they did not complete this action with the conquest of the political power, but gave the enemy class the possibility of going ahead to reconstruct the disorganized mechanism of the state, to place it at the service of its own interests and to utilize it against the proletarian revolution.
This profound error of the working class will have irreparable consequences for the cause of its emancipation if it does not decide to react energetically. The fascist insurrection of the 19th of July created all the objective conditions for the conquest of power. The state mechanism had become so seriously disorganized that it had ceased to exist. The forces of public order were demoralized, indisciplined and disinherited. The army was destroyed. All the juridical mechanism was liquidated. The local organs of power were virtually suppressed, replaced by revolutionary committees. The proprietors of the land were expelled. The factories and shops were confiscated. The arms, indispensable premise of victory, were in the hands of the workers and peasants, the absolute masters of the situation. And, as a corollary of this state of affairs, there was the feeling, among the exploiting classes and the middle class masses, that the former regime had disappeared forever.
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