Spain's Revolution against Franco: The Great Betrayal

by Alan Woods

Overview

The story of the Spanish revolution of the 1930s is quite well known to most people on the left, but there is a surprising level of ignorance concerning the events that occurred subsequently. History did not cease with the victory of Franco in 1939. And the story of how the Franco dictatorship was eventually brought down by the revolutionary movement of the Spanish workers is an inspiring one.

Under the most difficult and dangerous conditions, Spanish workers launched a strike wave, which, in its intensity and duration, has no parallel anywhere. There was nothing remotely like this in Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy or Salazar’s Portugal. This was a genuine revolution, which could and should have gone far further than it did. If it did not finally succeed, that was no fault of the working class. The Spanish revolution of the 1970s was shamefully betrayed by the leaders of the communist and socialist parties, who entered into an agreement with former fascists in order halt the movement in its tracks.

Alan Woods participated personally in the last phase of this struggle and was a witness to some of its most decisive moments. Using a wealth of documentary material from the time and also new interviews with key participants in the events, he tears away the thick veil of lies, myths and half-truths to reveal what actually occurred.

With new struggles and challenges on the order of the day in Spain and the rest of the world, it is the duty of all conscious workers and revolutionary youth to study the lessons of the past as a necessary precondition for victory in the future. This book is an important contribution to a necessary learning process and is obligatory reading for anyone who is interested in the struggle for socialism today.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940163375196
Publisher:	Wellred
Publication date:	10/25/2019
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Alan Woods was born in Swansea, South Wales, in 1944 into a working-class family with strong communist traditions. At the age of 16, he joined the Young Socialists and became a Marxist. He studied Russian at Sussex University and later in Sofia (Bulgaria) and the Moscow State University (MGU). He has a wide experience of the international labour movement and played an active role in building the Marxist tendency in Spain, where he participated in the struggle against the Franco dictatorship. He was later active in Pakistan, Mexico and other countries, including Venezuela, where he developed a close relationship with the late Hugo Chavez, and founded the international campaign, Hands off Venezuela. Alan Woods is the author of many works covering a wide spectrum of issues, including politics, economics, history, philosophy, art, music and science. He is also the political editor of the popular website In Defence of Marxism (marxist.com) and a leading member of the International Marxist Tendency. Highlights of the books he has authored are: Lenin and Trotsky: What they Really Stood For and Reason in Revolt: Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science, both in conjunction with the late Ted Grant; Marxism and the United States; Reformism or Revolution; The Venezuelan Revolution: A Marxist Perspective, The Ideas of Karl Marx and Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution. He also edited and completed Trotsky’s last unfinished work, the biography of Stalin, which had remained incomplete for seventy years. His books have been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Italian, German, Greek, Turkish, Urdu, Danish, Portuguese, Russian and Bahasa Indonesian.