The book relates how the real proletarian revolution in Spain in 1936 was hijacked by political forces across the whole spectrum, fascist and anti-fascist, hence the title, counter-revolution, 1936-39. It is the complete work, published in «Bilan»: Contre-revolution en Espagne, 1936-1939, and republished in a shorter form in a pamphlet, under the title, Fascism/anti-fascism.
This is a reconceived version of 'Fascism and Anti-Fascism'. In this text, Dauvé shows how the wave of proletarian revolts in the first half of the twentieth century failed: either because they were crushed by the vicissitudes of war and ideology, or because their “victories” took the form of counter-revolutions themselves, setting up social systems which, in their reliance on monetary exchange and wage-labour, failed to transcend capitalism.