Why The Homage to Orwell?

Transcription

1 Why The Homage to Orwell? by LLOYD EDMONDS One of the most com m only prescribed books fo r students of English literature has been George O rw ell s Homage to Catalonia. Educational authorities and others present this book, not only as literature, but as the authority on the Spanish Civil War of Is this choice justified? And if not, w hy is it prom oted in this way? George Orwell served altogether about fo u r m onths on the Aragon and Teruel fronts in Catalonia. On arrival in Barcelona, he enlisted in a unit dom inated by Anarchists and POUMists, had a brief excursion into the Aragon hills, fired a few shots, returned to Barcelona and, after a short stay there, returned to London. ' Because of the stalemate that had been reached in the Aragon, he saw little fig htin g. By a m ischance he was nearly killed in May 1937 when a bullet went through his throat. In Central Spain, on the Madrid front, in Andalusia, in the Asturias, in the Basque country, large arm ies were locked in com bat. The insurgent generals, in addition to their regular troops, recruited over 100,000 M oorish m ercenaries in North Africa, and also received men and massive m ilitary aid from nazi Germany and fascist Italy. The troops marshalled by the governm ent on the various fronts num bered over 600,000. The main countries all played some part in the conflict.. :ner openly, as in the case of Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union, or indirectly, or in an underhand way, as in the case of the USA, Great B ritain and France. Yet our students get as a definite statem ent of this Arm ageddon, a picture of a futile guerrilla skirm ish. In the minds of the troops and the people of the war zones in C entral and Southern Spain, B a rc e lo n a r e p r e s e n te d an o a s is o f recuperation and recreation where the rigors and austerities of war could be forgotten fo r a tim e at least. The w ell-being was, of course, relative. Compared w ith Paris, Barcelona was austere; in com parison w ith Madrid, it was the fleshpots. M adrid was very nearly isolated. It was

2 WHY THE HOM AGE TO ORW ELL? 13 linked by only one route w ith the rest of Spain. As its food was all brought in on this one road - the Valencia road - the diet of the M adrileno was meagre and unvarying: salted cod, lentils, Mexican chick peas, and ersatz coffee - that was it. For nearly three years the living conditions of the M adrileno were like that. They suffered food shortage, actual danger and physical restriction to a lim ited city area. Barcelona was heavily bombed several times, but apart from that it survived the w ar intact w ithout becom ing a battleground. Barcelona had hundreds of square kilom etres of farm land surrounding it - all of Catalonia. From it came a constant flo w of fresh food. The many textile and clo th ing factories of Barcelona operated th ro u g h o u t the war. Many of these, particula rly the self-m anaging enterprises, had th e ir ow n purchasing and selling agents in France. Through these channels were brought food, clo thin g and cigarettes, m ainly fo r the em ployees of the factories, but some trickled out to the general population. And of course there was the port. Despite the blockade, some ships were generally in the harborand consum er goods dribbled through. The tw o cities felt the im pact of the war, but in one case it was extrem e and in the other, relatively mild. Madrid never capitulated. It was betrayed in March 1939 by a clique of officers headed by Colonel Casado. Franco s troops m arched into Barcelona early in February 1939 and the city was surrendered w ith o u t a shot being fired. If the tw o cities are com pared fo r their war records, their devotion to dem ocratic ideals and constancy to the Republican governm ent, then Madrid deserves the honor and the glory. T ruly heroic M adrid! Yet O rwell pays his homage to Catalonia. There is no lack of m aterial on the Spanish Civil War. On the contrary, a veritable spate of nove ls, poem s, a n th o lo g ie s, h is to rie s, pam phlets and film s deal d ire ctly w ith the war. W riters of the em inence of Andre M alraux in France, Jose Maria G ironella in Spain and Ernest Hem ingway - to name three from different countries - have w ritten m ajor novels w ith the Spanish Civil W ar as the dom inant motif. And in com parison w ith these three, O rw ell s know ledge of Spain and the w ar is obviously lim ited and deficient. Orwell and Hem ingway are tw o leading figures in the w orld o f letters. Both w ent to Spain on the side of the Republic. Both w rote books about the war and both books deal with the exploits of a guerrilla band. However, w hile H em ingw ay s work is a novel, a piece of im aginative literature, O rw ell s w ork is a political m em oir. Hem ingw ay really knew Spain. Before the w ar he had lived in Spain and he appreciated the Spanish way of life. He held this hispanism o so deeply that, on the defeat of the Republic, he w ent to Cuba to live. There he witnessed another revolution. W ith the victory of Fidel Castro, Hem ingway continued to live in Cuba, greatly to the satisfaction of the Cubans. A fter May 1937, Orwell returned to England to be lionised by the literary establishm ent. O rwell had gone to Spain fo r the experience. His im m ediate and unrem itting concern was to be a w riter. He needed experiences and concerns that he could transm ute into literature. Orwell kept aloof from his fellow soldiers. He shows no particular liking or interest in the individual Spaniard or Catalan w ho were his comrades. The history of Catalonia, or of Spain, or the intricacies of the Spanish and Catalan political scene were not his concerns. Hem ingway, on the contrary was in Spain because he was a partisan on the side of the Spanish people. He loved their individualism, vigor and distinctiveness. His ear fo r their conversation and their thoughts is portrayed in his description of the members of the guerrilla band. In sharp contrast to O rw e ll s qualified w ar effort, sense of fu tility and selfrecrim ination is H em ingw ay s w hole-hearted com m itm ent, optim ism and vigor. Hem ingway had no doubts. Every talent and asset he had, he devoted to the cause of the Republic - his w riting skills and literary renown, his contacts w ith influential people, his personal income. He risked his life beyond the call of his jo urna listic duties. He saw as clearly as did O rwell, cruelty, inefficiency and political m anoeuvring. But p a ra m o u n t, o v e r-rid in g th e se, w as th e necessity to defeat the resurgent forces of reactionary Spain.

3 14 A us I R ALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 54 In contrast to O rw e lls desultory excursion in Homage to Catalonia, the band of guerrillas in H em ingw ay s book For W hom the Bell Tolls has a positive role to play in the war They are part of an offensive by the R epublican Arm y. They are to blow up a bridge so as to disrupt the com m unications of Franco s forces - an exploit integral to the strategic plan o f the Republicans. O rw ell s centuria makes its excursion into the hills of the A ragon with no aim. w ith no purpose. Its m em bers are apparently actuated by a consciousness of th e ir inactivity in Barcelona and by a vague hope that w hat they do may be of some use. Orwell says of him self: I was sick of the inaction on the A ragon fro n t and chiefly conscious that I had not done my share of the fig h tin g. I used to think of the re c ru itin g p o s te r in B a rc e lo n a w h ic h dem anded accusingly of passers-by What have you done fo r dem ocracy and feel I could only answer I have drawn my rations... And, of course, I w anted to go to M adrid. Everyone in the A rm y whatever his political views always wanted to go to M adrid. Why d id n t they go to M adrid? There was nothing to stop them. John C ornford, a com m unist and a poet who also served w ith the POUM in Barcelona w ent to M adrid. He was killed there. When staying in Madrid, H em ingw ay had a room at the leading hotel in the city, the Florida. The main buildings of Madrid were regularly shelled by Franco s artillery, among them the Hotel Florida. So H em ingw ay became a colle cto r of shell fragm ents. When one of the hotel room s was hit, he gathered shell fragm ents, labelled them, and made his room a m useum -piece. H em ingw ay enjoyed show ing visitors to Madrid his m iniature war museum. H em ingw ay s political attitude has been v in d ic a te d by e ve n ts in S p a in to d a y. C o ntinuing its policies from the Civil War period, the Spanish C om m unist Party is w inning m ajority support o f the Spanish workers. Further, the tw o political parties that were the bulw ark of the Spanish R e p u b lic -th e C om m unists and the Socialists - are the w orkers parties today. The A narchists have ceased to be an effective political force. It is doubtful whether, fo rth e Western w orld, any other internal co n flict has had the intellectual and cultural im pact of the Spanish W ar To m any people, especially those concerned w ith the onw ard march o f the fa s c is t r t^ m e s, Spain was the scene of overriding im portance in this struggle. And it is extraordinary that this struggle should so often be presented as a story of one man's episodic and brief stay in one region of Spain It is extraordinary because of the battle of the Spanish people against the m ilitary coup of Franco, although it had aspects peculiar to Spain and arising from Spanish history, was generally regarded as part of the defence of dem ocracy against fascism. This defence became Europe-w ide, then w o rld wide, w ith W orld War II. Why, then, homage to C atalonia? It was not Catalonia. The attraction to Orwell was the Anarchists and th e ir allies, w hose base was Barcelona. T h e ir p h ilo s o p h y, th e ir m e th o d s of organisation, or lack of organisation, their more prim itive style of life - these are the factors w hich appealed to O rw ell. A more appropriate title fo r his book w ould possibly have been "Hom age to Spanish A narchism. The Anarchists figured prom inently during the Spanish C ivil War period. It is different today. Sum m arising from a study of the underground w orkers parties in Spain today in an inform ed article in The E conom ist of January 28, 1976, the prevailing trend among the Spanish w orkers is tow ards socialism. Of the trade unionists, about half are influenced by the com m unists and a third by the socialists. The article specifically states The anarcho-syndicalist CNT, once the biggest S p a n ish la b o r m o v e m e n t, is o f little significance today. But tod ay s students in A ustralia read Orwell - and his preference is very clear. He says The danger was quite sim ple and intellig ib le. It was the antagonism between those who wished the revolution to go forw ard and those w ho wished to check or prevent it - ultim ately between Anarchists and C om m unists. The com m unists policy was never in doubt. It was to win the war. This was expressed by D olores Ibarruri (La Pasionaria) when Largo C abellero proposed setting up a trade union governm ent. She said When we must concentrate all our efforts on the w aging of a war so vital for Spain, experim ents in trade union governm ents seem to be a grave error.

4 WHY THE HOM AGE TO ORW ELL? From the Spanish Civil War: A Republican soldier shot and impaled in a tree Should this plan m aterialise, it w ould lead to the disintegration of anti-fascist unity and accelerate the trium ph of fascism. "The trade unions are already represented in the governm ent and have am ple freedom to act. We suspect this plan is nothing but a manoeuvre to push the Republican parties out of the governm ent and the C om m unist Party firm ly opposes it. W ith the P opular Front we won in February and w ith this Popular Front governm ent w hich gives proportional representation to all a ntifascist forces in the country, we shall w in the war " In fact, just as Largo C abellero never abandoned the idea of leading a governm ent based on his party and the UCT, so,too, the anarchists never renounced the plan to give

5 16 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 54 first p rio rity to the establishm ent of libertarian com m unism. Here are quotations from tw o historians, n e ith e r of w h o m are frie n d ly to th e com m unists, both conservative in attitude but with know ledge of the anarchists. Dante A. Puzzo, in his w ork Spain and the Great Powers, w rote: The A narchists had a barricade philosophy and spoke the language of revolt in season and out. Frozen in a posture of defiance, they were boisterous, tu rb u le n t a n d tr o u b le s o m e a lw a y s, e ffe c tiv e revolutionaries never. Thus it had been under the M onarchy, thus it had been under the dictatorship and so it was underth e Republic. It was only after the revolt of the generals that the Anarchists seized the opportu n ity created by that event to im plem ent th e ir notions of libertarian com m unism ' and then only in Catalonia where they were strongest." Gerald Brenen in The Spanish Labyrinth declares that Ineffectual as a revolutionary fo rc e, o n ly m o d e ra te ly s u c c e s s fu l in im proving the conditions of the workers, it (the A n a rc h is t m o ve m e n t) has d o g g e d and hampered every governm ent, good or bad... By playing always fo r the highest stakes it has necessarily proved on many occasions, the friend of reaction. Why was the anarchist movement in Spain so crucial to the war period? Spain was one of the strongholds of anarchism going back a h u n d re d years. In 1873, it c la im e d a m em bership of three hundred thousand - a large num ber for those days. It had 270 local centres, the most im portant of them in Barcelona. In O ctober 1910, a congress of anarchist groups and certain independentfederations of w orkers met in Seville and form ed the C NT - C onfederation Nacional del Trabajo. So, at the outbreak of the Spanish war, the Spanish w orking class was divided. The trade unions had tw o confederations - the UGT (U nion General del Trabajadores) led by socialists of whom the best know n is Largo C abellero and the CNT dom inated by the anarchists. From th e b e g in n in g th e a n a rc h is ts established a pattern of non-co-operation. Salvador de M adariaga (a conservative Spanish historian), fo r example, w rites of the 1931 elections: The w orkers affiliated to the UGT voted fo r their men. But the A narcho- Syndicalists voted fo r the m iddle-class liberals. There were tw o reasons fo r this. The first, the unbridgeable enm ity w hich separates S ocialists and Syndicalists, due to th e ir rival bid fo r the leadership of the w orking classes; the second that, as the A narchists always preached contem pt fo r suffrage, they had no political m achinery of th e ir own; so that when it came to voting - w hich they did this tim e to help oust the M onarchy - they preferred to vote fo r the m iddle-class R epublican whose liberal views were more in harm ony w ith the anti- M arxist ideas of the Spanish syndicalists. The Civil War was waged w ith a m inim um of anarchist participation. When the anarchists were reproached about the im m o b ility of the Aragon front, they replied that they had no arms. In fact, they had more arms than did many other fronts. At the beginning of the w ar they had captured most of the arms in the B a rc e lo n a fo rtre s s. U n til the N e g rin governm ent later established state control over them, the Barcelona factories w orked for the anarchists. They also had at their disposal a com plete netw ork of international brokers who purchased arms fo r them in France and other countries. What they did not have, and what they were constantly dem anding, were aeroplanes and tanks - w hich were lacking on all fronts. The lim ited num bers at the disposal of the R epublican governm ent, of necessity had to go to the fronts where there were offensives. The real reason fo r the im m obility of the Aragon fro n t stemmed from the policies of the anarchists. They stated that w inning the war did not mean w inning the revolution. They planned to keep their forces intact fo r the future libertarian com m unist Spain. Spain had not discarded many social relics of its past. As late as the 'thirties of this century, social categories that were vestiges of earlier econom ic stages of Spanish history asserted themselves fo rsurviva l. A long w ith its m ule-cart agriculture, its sem i-feudal land tenure, the C atholic perm eation of all aspects of life, its antique political parties such as two m onarchist (one Bourbon and one C arlist), and various regional clerical parties, it had for the oppressed a sim plistic and unreal political philosophy. A narchism is an expression of the prim itive econom y of pre-industrial Spain. Independent

6 WHY THE HOM AGE TO ORW ELL? 17 peasants, peasants ruined by debt, the large landless population of a co u n try not yet industrialised - these social strata are predisposed to anarchism. A rth ur H. Landis in Spain, the U nfinished Revolution sums it up w ell. "Its (A narchism s) sum m ons to violence, its generous and m ystical utopianism, its nostalgia fo r a golden age is readily adaptable to a country w hich is still essentially rural, where the proletariat is relatively weak and of im m ediate peasant origin, and where the C atholic faith has fo r a long tim e been the bearer o f hope and consolation fo r hum ble fo lk. Why was Orwell prom oted so strongly in the Cold War period? By the end of W orld War 11, after tw o decades o f u n p re c e d e n te d p o litic a l and s o c ia l upheavals, ordinary people, the hoi polloi, had taken part in, or seen, a m ajor series of social collisions and governm ental upsets. D uring the 'thirties, w hile experiencing the shattering effects of the Depression, the breakdown of capitalist society, they, at the same time, witnessed the rise of co u n te r revolutionary forces spear-headed by H itler and his like. Then the war. The fascist countries, p ro p a g a to rs o f h ie ra rc h ic a l s o c ie tie s dom inated by a master sex, a master race, a m a ste r class. T hey w e re th e e nem y. Unabashed apostles of force and exploitation, who disdained to cloak th e ir ideology w ith the sanction of law or the m ystification of religion. And to be fo u g h t they had to be exposed. The basic forces of society were uncovered to increasing num bers of people. W orking people thus got a crash course in social education. The antithesis of fascism was the Spanish people's struggle. The sustained e ffort of the Spanish people to cast off th e irso cia l enemies highlighted the thirties. It was the alternative. This mental attitude - a degree of lack of acceptance of the status quo, a lack of acquiescence in capitalist norm s undoubtedly was a m atter of concern fo r the theoreticians of w orld capitalism. It was particularly so for the financial and industrial olig archy of the United States and Great B ritain, as voiced by C hurchill at Fulton in The USA w ith immense econom ic power was poised fo r w orld hegem ony. But people doubted the rightness of this cause. So started the battle fo r people's hearts and m inds' So started the C old War. One of the ideals that had to be underm ined was the repute earned by the Spanish Republicans in their resistance to Franco. If not obliterated at least it could be perverted. Hence the w elcom e of the authorities for O rwell. He became the cultural hero. As well as a d is to rtio n of S p a n ish h is to ry, th is introduction to Orwell leads on to later works where collectivism is depicted as nightm arish horror. T ro o p s o f lite ra ry a u th o ritie s and educational pundits, whose general bias is to oppose change, welcom e a revolutionary O rwell - but an Orwell urging anarchy in opposition to m arxist parties w ho are denounced as conservative. The same attitude pervades m ost histories of the Spanish C ivil War. It is accepted practice to describe the main defenders of the Republic, the socialists as well as the com m unists, as intriguers, opportunists and pow er-hungry. Now and then a footnote qualifies these assertions. Hugh Thomas, the historian of the Spanish Civil War w ho is generally regarded as the most sound, and extensively quoted by the liberal educational and literary establishm ent, warns in a fo otnote against acceptance of O rw ell s analysis and facts. Despite this, in a recent tw o -h o u r program on the Spanish Civil War by ABC radio, the arranger, J.D. Pringle (one-tim e editor of the Sydney M orning Herald), eulogised Homage to Catalonia both for its literary m erit and the best account of the Spanish w ar. Thus art is put at the service of politics. The anti-m arxist intellectual, George O rwell, serves current political ends, to discredit com m unists and to pervert the history of the Spanish Civil War. Lloyd Edmonds served in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigade from 1937 until January During that time, he was in many parts of the country, but particularly the Madrid front and Catalonia. He knew Hemingway rather well, on firstname terms, seeing him both in Madrid and on the fronts. As a result of his experiences, Lloyd Edmonds joined the Communist Party of Spain.