Jose Diaz, For Unity, until Victory, Report to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain. March 5, 1937

In this March 5, 1937 report to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain, José Díaz cast the civil war as a national liberation struggle and argued that victory required a broadened Popular Front and disciplined support for the republican state. He envisioned a “democratic and parliamentary republic of a new type,” committed to land reform, limiting clerical power, and breaking oligarchic control, while coordinating production for wartime needs. His hardest polemic targeted the left: he condemned premature “socialization” and “collectivization,” and denounced Trotskyists and POUM as “uncontrollables” who splintered unity and aided fascism.

Original Source: Por la unidad, hacia la victoria, discurso pronunciado en el Pleno del C.C. ampliado del Partido Comunista de Espana, celebrado en Valencia los d¡as 5, 6, 7 y 8 de Marzo de 1937 (Barcelona: Partido Comunista de Espana, 1937), pp. 10, 12-14, 17-18, 38, 46-

The Communist position in Spain is significant as a link between their old avowedly revolutionary line and their post-World-War-II appeal on an ostensibly reformist or nationalist basis-vide Diaz's stress on the role of the "new" type of "democratic" republic.

Realizing the new character which our struggle acquired when the war began, our party announced the slogan of broadening the Popular Front, of turning toward the union of all Spaniards. For this it took account of the fact that the civil war was now transformed into a war of independence, a war of national liberation ...

Our struggle, which in its basic content is a national one, also has a marked international character. This international character of our struggle has been defined, in a few words but in the manner of a genius, by our great comrade Stalin ... Stalin, in his historic telegram to the Central Committee of our party says the following:

In helping the revolutionary masses of Spain as much as possible, the workers of the Soviet Union are only doing their duty. They realize that to liberate Spain from the oppression of the fascist reactionaries is not the private affair of the Spaniards, but the common cause of all advanced and progressive humanity.

We are fighting for the Democratic Republic, for a democratic and Parliamentary Republic of a new type, with deep social content. The struggle which is going on in Spain does not have as its object the establishment of a democratic republic such as can be seen in France or in any other capitalist country. No; the Democratic Republic for which we are fighting is different. We are fighting to destroy the material bases on which reaction and fascism rest, for without the destruction of these bases a true political democracy cannot exist.

In our struggle we are pursuing the annihilation of the material bases of semi-feudal Spain, tearing out the roots of fascism ...

We must annihilate the big landholders ...

We must also destroy the economic and political power of the Church, which was a center of conspiracy against the popular masses and one of the firmest supports of semi-feudal Spain, and for this we must proceed with the confiscation and nationalization of its property. Let it be well understood that fighting the Church in its semi-feudal economic and political structure is not the same thing as fighting religion, but the contrary, for only a republican and democratic Spain, liberal and progressive, will be able to guarantee freedom of religion in our country.

We must also proceed with the liquidation of militarism ...

We must likewise break up the great financial oligarchies ...

In addition to these fundamental points, whose solution will mean the disappearance of the semi-feudal castes which have been dominant in Spain, and the transformation of the material and social base of our new Democratic and Parliamentary Republic, it is necessary to proceed, as the complement of what this should be, to the establishment of true universal suffrage, to the direct participation of all the people in elections and in the posts of political and economic leader. of the country. Thus we will move directly to the inauguration of a true democracy, which will permit wide channels to be opened for the economic, political, and cultural progress of our people ...

... The fact of not having clearly understood the character of our struggle leads organizations and parties associated, with ours to adopt extremist attitudes which in no way benefit the cause of the people, but far from carrying us rapidly to victory, seriously obstruct the attainment of it. To these equivocal positions correspond those premature attempts at "socialization" and "collectivization" ... Today, when there is a Popular Front government in which all the forces who are fighting against fascism are represented, this is not advisable, but is self-defeating. Now it is necessary to move rapidly to coordinate production and intensify it under a single administration to provide everything necessary for the front and the rear. To persist now in these attempts is to go against the interests which are supposedly being defended. To announce those premature attempts at "socialization" and "collectivization" while the war has still not been decided, at moments when the enemy within, aided by fascism without, is violently attacking our positions and endangering the fate of our country, is absurd and equivalent to becoming accomplices of the enemy. Such attempts reveal the failure to understand the character of our struggle, which is the struggle for the defense of the Democratic Republic, in which all the popular forces needed to win the war can and must combine.

It is said that the Communists have renounced their revolutionary program. No; what has happened is that we conform to the realities of the struggle and the necessities of the war ...

We have not abandoned our revolutionary program just because we did not carry forward these unfortunate attempts. What is happening is that today it is impossible to have a more revolutionary program than the one which the Communist Party has placed before the people. We plan our tactics and our strategy in accordance with the given situation. That is, we Marxist-Leninists apply to each concrete situation the tactics and strategy which correspond to that situation; and he who pretends to jump stages, with resounding names, wishing to do the impossible, will smash against the difficulties of the situation. But the harm is not that they smash themselves; the harm is that with their lack of understanding they compromise everyone's cause and endanger the freedom of Spain ...

In spite of everything, at all cost, we must maintain the Popular Front. Whatever the difficulties which are found in our path, the Communist Party will continue to be the most vigorous defender of the Popular Front and of its expression in power: the legitimate government. Our party will permit no one to attack the union of the anti-fascist forces with impunity. Our slogan is, "United now to win the war, and united afterward to reap the fruits of victory"; he who tries to break the union of the Popular Front, he who tries to break the union of the Spanish people struggling for the independence of Spain and staking everything on this struggle, is working consciously or unconsciously in favor of our enemies ...

Who are the enemies of the people? The enemies of the people are the fascists, the Trotskyites, and the "uncontrollables." ... Our principal enemy is fascism. Against it we are concentrating all of the people's vigor and hatred. Against it we are setting all the forces ready to annihilate it; but our hatred is also directed, with the same concentrated force, against the agents of fascism who hide themselves behind pretended revolutionary slogans as POUMists, disguised Trotskyites, the better to accomplish their mission as agents of our enemies waiting in ambush in our own territory. We cannot annihilate the Fifth Column without also annihilating those who also defend politically the enemy's slogans directed at disrupting and disuniting the anti-fascist forces. The slogans of the enemy are: Against the Democratic Republic, against the anti-Fascist Popular Front, against the Popular Front government, against the regular army, etc., and above all against the Soviet Union on account of its magnificent solidarity with the Spanish people in this struggle. Although the Trotskyites try to conceal themselves with other apparently more revolutionary slogans, such as the social republic, workers' government, red militia, they cannot avoid revealing their fascist ears ...

It is a serious error to consider the Trotskyites as a fraction of the workers' movement. This is an unprincipled group of counterrevolutionaries classified as agents of internationalism. The recent Moscow trial has shown in the light of day that the chief of the band, Trotsky, is a direct agent of the Gestapo. In his hatred of the Soviet Union, of the great Bolshevik Party and of the Communist International, he joined hands with the fascists ...

Source: Robert V. Daniels, ed., A Documentary History of Communism (New York: Vintage, 1960), pp. 117-121.