Issuing body: Conference for the Fourth International (Geneva/Paris)
---
TO THE WORKERS OF SPAIN AND OF THE WHOLE WORLD
The conference representing the various organisations that are fighting in Europe and throughout the world for the Fourth International sends you its warmest greetings, with the passionate hope that your magnificent efforts will be crowned with triumph over all the enemies of the armed people.
Once again, through your heroism and your irresistible élan, you are giving to the workers and the oppressed of the whole world the demonstration that flows from all the social struggles of our epoch: only the rifle on the worker's shoulder can guarantee the workers' freedom, bread and peace.
It is because it was diverted by the Popular Front from its revolutionary tasks (seizing power, destroying the bourgeoisie and its props — the army, the police, etc. — giving the land to the peasants, organising the soviets, arming the people) that the working class has, for five years now, been struggling in bloody convulsions. It is the Popular Front which, by systematically confining itself within the framework of the capitalist regime and its bourgeois democratic State, fed the fascist militarist insurrection that came close to dealing a mortal blow to the Spanish revolution. The complete capitulation of the workers' parties before the radicals and their programme allowed finance capital to make use of the radicals and the democratic regime in order to maintain the fascist and reactionary officer corps — that is, in fact, to prepare the fascist insurrection.
Without the workers' militias, wresting arms from the liberal ministers, without the mass levy of the armed people, Madrid would today be in the hands of the fascists. But heroism and combativity are not enough to win. Preparation and training are needed. That was the lesson to be drawn from the defeat in Asturias.¹ Despite this, the Popular Front set about hindering and combating, as "provocations," the mere propaganda for a workers' militia.
Today the facts are there for all to see. The civil war is dragging on for want of preparation and of a prior revolutionary policy.
The Second and Third Internationals, and each of their governments (Blum and Stalin), take cover behind the hypocritical excuse of neutrality in order to do nothing for the fighters of Spain. Meanwhile the fascist governments (Italy, Germany) arm the counter-revolution.
Woe to the Spanish people if they allow themselves to be deceived and lulled to sleep once more, if they keep their trust in those who, by their policy of disarming the people, have fed the forces of fascist reaction!
The end of the sufferings of the civil war and the victorious outcome of the struggle are closely bound up with the capacity of the Spanish working class to forge, in the course of its battles, its new leadership, a genuine revolutionary party. The interests of the Spanish revolution are one with the historic interests of the Fourth International.
To go forward along the road to victory, the working people must organise themselves in revolutionary committees (soviets). The bourgeoisie must be expropriated and swept away, and a workers' and peasants' government must be established.
The cadres must be forged and the ranks of the workers' and peasants' militia consolidated; a red army must be organised. The land must be given to the peasants.
Reaction has made of Morocco a bulwark against the Spanish people. A people that oppresses another people cannot itself become free. Free the Moroccan people! You will thereby make of it a formidable ally for driving Franco's bandits into the sea and for crushing your enemies on your own peninsula.²
Workers of France, of Belgium, of England, workers of every country! The struggle of the Spanish people is your struggle and that of all of us. No neutrality is possible!
The fascists of Rome and Berlin are arming the fascists of Spain.
The Spanish people must be helped by every means: by sending them arms, by sabotaging the arming of the fascist camp, by supplying the revolution, by starving the counter-revolution, by organising assistance and shelter for the families and children of the victims, by forming everywhere, from now on, committees of support for the Spanish revolution. In every port, and along every transport route, all manner of supply of arms or provisions to the fascists must be systematically sabotaged by the workers.
But the best way of helping the Spanish revolutionaries is to follow their example in the struggle against fascism in our own countries, by driving out those who wish to disarm the workers, materially and politically, by leading the revolutionary offensive against our own bourgeoisie, for its overthrow by the soviets of workers and peasants.
Long live the victorious Spanish revolution! Long live the active solidarity of the international proletariat! Long live the world party of the social revolution, the Fourth International!
---
[Prager's notes]
1. The Asturian miners rose in October 1934 and took control of the region. The movement was crushed by Moroccan troops and the Spanish Foreign Legion under the command of Franco, at the cost of 3,000 dead.
2. The Trotskyists were convinced that the loyalty of the Moroccan troops, widely used by Franco, could be undermined, provided the Republic granted independence to Morocco. The Popular Front governments never consented to consider such a decision.