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Spain and its Relevance Today
by Iain MacSaorsa
Lessons from the Spanish Revolution
"To organise a [libertarian] communist society on a large
scale it would be necessary to transform all economic life
radically, such as methods of production, of exchange and
consumption; and all this could not be achieved other than
gradually, as the objective circumstances permitted and to the
extent that the masses understood what advantages could be
gained and were able to act for themselves" Errico Malatesta,
Life and Ideas, page 36
In part one, we indicated the social revolution that occurred
after Franco's military coup was defeated in the streets. We also
said that this revolution was undermined by the state and could
not develop fully and that this was caused (in part) by the
actions of the C.N.T. and F.A.I. committees. The issue now is
what lessons for our struggles and times can be learned from the
anarchist movement in Spain and the 1936 revolution?
We should not rush to condemn the C.N.T. out of hand. We should
search for an explanation of what happened. The fact that
anarchists joined a government should prompt the question, was
the defeat in Spain a defeat of anarchist theory and tactics OR a
failure of anarchists to apply their theory and tactics?
It is clear from the actions of, for example, the Makhnovists in
the Ukraine during the Russian Revolution that anarchism is a
valid approach to social struggle and revolution. So what made
Spain "special"?
Firstly, as discussed in part one, the question of antifascist
unity. The C.N.T. leaders were totally blinded by this, leading
them to support a "democratic" state against a "fascist" one.
While the bases of a new world was being created, inspiring the
fight against fascism, the C.N.T. leaders collaborated with the
system that spawns fascism, As the Friends of Durruti make clear,
"Democracy defeated the Spanish people, not Fascism" (Class War
on the Home Front, page 30).
The false dilemma of "anarchist dictatorship" or "collaboration"
was a fundamentally wrong. It was never a case of banning
parties, etc under an anarchist system, far from it. Full rights
of free speech, organisation and so on should have existed for
all but the parties would only have as much influence as they
exerted in union/workplace/community/ militia/etc assemblies, as
should be the case! "Collaboration" yes, but within the rank and
file and within organisations organised in an anarchist manner.
Anarchism does not respect the "freedom" to be a boss or
politician.
Instead of this "collaboration" from the bottom up, the C.N.T.
and F.A.I. committees favoured "collaboration" from the top down.
This, as indicated in part 1, only favoured the state and the
(political and economic) bosses. For example, Gaston Leval
indicates that the collectivisation decree of October 1936
"legalising collectivisation", "distorted everything right from
the start" (Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, page 227)
and did not allow the collectives to develop beyond a self-
managed semi-socialist condition into full socialism.[1]
Anarchosyndicalism
The centralisation which occurred within the C.N.T. after 19th
July did not "just happen". There are institutional reasons why
it occurred. These come from anarchosyndicalist practice.
The fusion of anarchism and the union movement ("syndicalism") is
the basic idea of anarchosyndicalism. The unions are enough in
themselves and, through the daily struggle for reforms, can lead
to socialism. In practice, this does not quite work
(unfortunately).
Anarchosyndicalist unions must operate within the same basic
situation as normal unions, therefore they come under the same
pressures and influences. These pressures of working within the
capitalist system (in a unionist manner) produces in all unions
the following tendencies:
1. They become bureaucratic/hierarchical, ie to generate
"leaders" or union bosses separated from the rank and file. In
order to get reforms, the union must negotiate and be prepared to
compromise (which in practice means to get their members back to
work). This results in the union committees, sooner or later,
trying to control their own rank and file. This process of
negotiation leads to a leader/led divide.
2. To concentrate on short term economic issues. This is due to
the need to attract and keep a large union membership.
It is clear from its history that the C.N.T. was not immune to
these tendencies. For example, the F.A.I. was formed explicitly
to combat reformism within the C.N.T. (see Peirats, page 238-9,
and Juan Gomaz Casas, page 100, for example). The actions of the
C.N.T. during the revolution had historical precedents.
Consistently committees had represented plenums with fait
accomplis and acted without mandates (sometimes in ways contrary
to C.N.T. policy). However, it must be pointed out this was
minimised by the nature of the C.N.T. although it did happen.
While anarchosyndicalism sees these dangers and tries to combat
them, it is clear that it can only partially do so in practice.
In addition, the idea that by controlling the economy
automatically means destroying the state is false. This comes
from French Revolutionary Syndicalism and not Anarchism. In
effect, it means ignoring the state. And ignoring something does
not make it go away. This idea can be seen from some aspects of
the Spanish Revolution, ie the working class took over the
economy but left the state intact. The C.N.T. leadership
collaborated with the state (had they become so used to
negotiating that they could not see beyond it?) and the rest is
history.
However, without the C.N.T. the revolution would not have
happened in the first place. The fact that the revolution
occurred at all is a glowing testimony to the independence and
militancy of ordinary C.N.T. members. An independence and
militancy which the C.N.T. structure unlike marxist unions
encouraged and not crushed through centralism.
The very structure and practice of the C.N.T. did produce a
revolutionary working class the likes of which the world has
rarely seen. As Jose Peirats states, "above the union level, the
CNT was an eminently political organisation..., a social and
revolutionary organisation for agitation and insurrection" (Jose
Peirats, Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, page 239).
Lessons
The following positive points can be gathered from the C.N.T. and
the Spanish anarchist movement :
1. Its structure encouraged the politicisation, initiative and
organisational skills of its members. It was a federal,
decentralised body, based on direct discussion and decision
making from the bottom up. "The CNT tradition was to discuss and
examine everything", according to one militant. As Bakunin said
"the International [ie the union movement] must be a people's
movement, organised from the bottom up by the free spontaneous
action of the masses. There must be no secret, governmentalism,
the masses must be informed of everything... All affairs of the
International must be thoroughly and openly discussed without
evasions and circumlations" (Bakunin on Anarchism, edited by Sam
Dolgoff, page 408).
The C.N.T. rejected full-time officials. Instead union officials
were part-timers who did union work either after work hours or,
if they had to miss work, they were paid their normal wage. Hence
they were in touch with the union members and shared their
experiences and needs as they continued to be workers. This
reduced the tendency for union bureaucracies to develop or for
officials to become an (unofficial) governing caste within the
organisations.
This created a viable and practical example of an alternative
method by which society could be organised. A method which was
based on the ability of ordinary people to direct society
themselves and which showed in practice that special ruling
authorities are undesirable and unnecessary.
It also proves that anarchist organisation is more revolutionary
that "socialist" (i.e. Marxist) forms (which are, at best, more
"democratic" forms of capitalist/statist structures).
2. The C.N.T. was organised, primarily, on a local basis. The
industrial union federations (ie union federations for one
industry) were weak. The real base of the C.N.T. was the
regional/local federation of all industrial unions in an area.
Hence class wide issues could be fought, industrial divides
overcome and solidarity action spread across industry.
The C.N.T., because of this, fought in and out of the factory for
social issues, helping to reduce the tendency towards
concentrating only on economics as "the demands of the CNT went
much further than those of any social democrat: with its emphasis
on true equality, autogestion [self-management] and working class
dignity, anarchosyndicalism made demands on the capitalist system
could not possibly grant to the workers" (J. Romero Maura, The
Spanish case, page 79, from Anarchism Today, edited by James
Joll et al. This short essay is very good summary of the history
and practice of the C.N.T. up to 1936 (although I feel that it
gets certain aspects of Bakunin's ideas on "syndicalism" wrong)).
This is not to ignore the importance of industry wide federations
of unions, of course. It just indicates that such forms of
industrial unionism can, and do, concentrate on partial aspects
of the class struggle and do not generate the same class and
social awareness as regionally based organisations.
3. Direct action was used in every case. This raised the
consciousness and militancy of the working class better than any
election campaign. The benefits of "Doing it Yourself" was seen
in practice. This, combined with anarchist organisation, resulted
in a movement in which people could transform their assumptions
about what was possible, necessary and desirable.
4. The role of anarchists, as anarchists. Without the actions and
ideas of anarchists, the C.N.T. would have soon become the same
as any other union. The anarchists raised the "moral tone" of the
unions and ensured they did not degenerate into reformism. This
had been pointed out by many people before hand, for example
Malatesta wrote: "Trade unions are by their very nature reformist
and never revolutionary. The revolutionary spirit must be
introduced, developed and maintained by the constant actions of
revolutionaries who work within their ranks as well as outside,
but it cannot be the normal definition of the union function. On
the contrary" (Errico Malatesta, Life and Ideas, page 117). [2]
The actions of our comrades did make the C.N.T. a revolutionary
organisation, did make it operate in an anarchist manner.
However, the tactics they used over time changed. In the late 20s
and early 30s, the F.A.I. started to fight reformism by be
elected to every union post they could. In the short term it
worked, but in the longer term it meant that "if the FAI
influenced the CNT, the opposite was also true... anarchism lost
much of its special character when anarchists tried to lead the
anarchosyndicalist federation. In fact, the anarchists were run
by the union..." and "blinkered by participation in union
committees, the FAI became incapable of a wider vision"
(Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, Jose Peirats, page 239).
This proved to by the undoing of the anarchist movement as the
reality of being a union official resulted in militants becoming
syndicalists first, anarchists second. As the rank and file
militants left for the front, the "moral tone" of the
organisation fell. The rank and file were too busy constructing
collectives and fighting to effectively control the committees.
In this situation, the actions of the committees could not be
effectively stopped by the normal C.N.T. procedures (plenums,
etc) and by the time anything could be done to stop the
consequences of the initial betrayal of the 20th of July, it was
too late.
This problem of "officialdom" was seen by many anarchists. As
Durruti noted "no anarchists in the union committees unless at
ground level. In these committees, in the case of conflict with
the boss, the militant is forced to compromise to arrive at an
agreement. The contacts and activities which come from being in
this position, push the militant towards bureaucracy. Conscious
of this risk, we do not wish to run it. Our role is to analyse
from the bottom the dangers which beset an union organisation
like ours. No militant should prolong his (sic) job in
committees, beyond the time allotted to him (sic). No permanent
and indispensable people" (Durruti The People Armed, page 216)
[3].
However, the dangers of bureaucracy could not be defeated by the
tactics of the F.A.I. in the 30's nor by those anarchists who
considered themselves as syndicalists first.
5. As noted earlier, for anarchism to succeed the state must not
be ignored but smashed and "replaced" by a libertarian
structure(s) to coordinate activity. In his history of the FAI,
Juan Gomaz Casas (an active Faista in 1936) makes this clear:
"How else could libertarian communism be brought about? It would
always signify dissolution of the old parties dedicated to the
idea of power, or at least make it impossible for them to pursue
their politics aimed at seizure of power. There will always be
pockets of opposition to new experiences and therefore resistance
to joining 'the spontaneity of the unanimous masses'. In
addition, the masses would have complete freedom of expression in
the unions as well as...their political organisations in the
district and communities" (Anarchist Organisation: the History
of the FAI, page 188).
As the Friends of Durruti said "A revolution requires the
absolute domination of the workers organisations". (The Friends
of Durruti accuse, from Class War on the Home Front, page 34).
Only this, the creation of viable anarchist organisations can
ensure that the state and capitalism can be destroyed and
replaced with a just system based on liberty, equality and
solidarity.
By way of a conclusion
Anarchism must be relevant to working class people. We must
advocate anarchist tactics and organisation in all struggles. It
is clear that to organise anarchists is not enough. We must
encourage the organisation of the working class, otherwise
"revolutionary" ideas are only the domain of professional
revolutionaries. People, under these circumstances, cannot
formulate and apply their own agenda and so remain passive tools
in the hands of leaders. By permanent libertarian social
organisation, people can control their own struggles and so,
eventually, their own lives. It accustoms people, through
practice, to self-management and so anarchism. The experience of
the C.N.T. shows this.
This was the great strength of the Spanish Anarchist movement. It
was a movement "that, in addition to possessing a revolutionary
idealogy [sic], was also capable of mobilising action around
objectives firmly rooted in the life and conditions of the
working class.... It was this ability periodically to identify
and express widely felt needs and feelings that, together with
its presence at community level, formed the basis of the strength
of radical anarchism, and enabled it to build a mass base of
support" (Nick Rider, The practice of direct action: the
Barcelona rent strike of 1931, page 99, from For Anarchism,
pages 79-105).
As Malatesta made clear, "to encourage popular organisations of
all kinds is the logical consequence of our basic ideas, and
should therefore be an integral part of our programme...
anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the
people to emancipate themselves... we want the new way of life to
emerge from the body of the people and correspond to the state of
their development and advance as they advance" (Life and Ideas,
page 90).
This can only occur via popular self-organisation. Bearing this
in mind, we must also be aware of the dangers in
anarchosyndicalism. The anarchist movement must not be (con)fused
with the mass organisations of the working class ("unions"). The
"union" (by which I mean any social organisation organised in a
libertarian manner, within and without workplaces, and definitely
not STUC trade unions) movement and anarchism follow different,
but related paths. These "unions" should be encouraged by
anarchists and be as anarchistic as possible in their operation
and practice, but they must never replace the anarchist movement
(ie certain aspects of anarchosyndicalism as tactics, not
principles).
In building the new world we must destroy the old one.
Revolutions are authoritarian by their very nature, but only in
respect to structures and social relations which promote
injustice, hierarchy and inequality. It is not "authoritarian" to
destroy authority! Revolutions, above all else, must be
libertarian in respect to the oppressed. That is, they must
develop structures that involve the great majority of the
population, who have previously been excluded from decision
making about social and economic issues.
When it comes to mass movements (and a revolution is the ultimate
mass movement), the role of anarchists is clear: encourage direct
action, decentralised, federal delegate organisations based on
direct discussion and direct decision making and destroy the
state. Not to do so is to repeat the mistakes of all previous
revolutions and which were the undoing of the largest anarchist
movement in the world.
Notes :-
1. As Bakunin wrote 60 years earlier "In a free community,
collectivism can only come about through the pressure of
circumstances, not by imposition from above but by a free
spontaneous movement from below" (Bakunin on Anarchism, page
200). For where else could the impetus for a libertarian social
revolution come from unless from "below"?
Its no coincidence that collectivisation was more socialistic in
rural collectives as the state was effectively destroyed in many
areas (like Aragon) by federations of collectives. As one
militant describes the process of collectivisation had to be
based on free federation "from the bottom up" :-
"There were, of course, those who didn't want to share and who
said that each collective should take care of itself. But they
were usually convinced in the assemblies. We would try to speak
to them in terms they understood. We'd ask, "Did you think it was
fair when the cacique [local boss] let people starve if there
wasn't enough work?" and they said, "Of course not". They would
eventually come around. Don't forget, there were three hundred
thousand collectivists [in Aragon], but only ten thousand of us
had been members of the C.N.T.. We had a lot of educating to do".
Felix Carrasquer, quoted in Free Women of Spain, page 79.
An anarchist society cannot be created "overnight", to assume so
would be to imagine that we could enforce our ideas on a pliable
population. Socialism can only be created from below, by people
who want it and understand it, organising and liberating
themselves. The lessons of Russia should have cleared any such
illusions about "socialist" states long ago. The lesson from
every revolution is that the mistakes made in the process of
liberation by people themselves are always minor compared to the
results of creating authorities which eliminate such "ideological
errors" by destroying the freedom to make mistakes. This only
destroys freedom as such, the only real basis for socialism.
2. Such ideas would, now, only be appropriate to rank and file
organisations created in and by struggle in opposition to the
Trade Unions. The STUC cannot be reformed, so why try? The last
70 years have contained enough proof of this.
3. As an aside, Durruti is echoing Bakunin who said "The purpose
of the Alliance [ie anarchist federation] is to promote the
Revolution... it will combat all ambition to dominate the
revolutionary movement of the people, either by cliques or
individuals. The Alliance will promote the Revolution only
through the NATURAL BUT NEVER OFFICIAL INFLUENCE of all members
of the Alliance" (Bakunin on Anarchism, edited by Sam Dolgoff,
page 387).