💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › iain-mckay-the-spanish-revolution.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 10:56:08. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: The Spanish Revolution Author: Iain McKay Date: March 2019 Language: en Topics: Spanish Revolution, anarchist history Source: Retrieved on 2020-04-11 from http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/spanish-revolution-anarchy-action
Why is the Spanish Revolution important? Why should it be remembered
today? Noam Chomsky summarises why:
“over most of Republican Spain there was a quite inspiring anarchist
revolution that involved both industry and agriculture over substantial
areas [...] by both human measures and indeed anyone’s economic
measures, quite successful […] production continued effectively; workers
in farms and factories proved quite capable of managing their affairs
without coercion from above, contrary to what lots of socialists,
communists, liberals and others wanted to believe.”
This wide-ranging and inspiring social revolution – even today often
ignored in histories of the Spanish Civil War – did not come out of the
blue. It was, as Chomsky reminds us, “based on three generations of
experiment and thought and work which extended anarchist ideas to very
large parts of the population.”
Here I will sketch the historical and theoretical context of the Spanish
Revolution as well as indicating its achievements and limitations.
Hopefully, this will inspire others to seek social revolution today –
one which learns from the positives and negatives of the events in 1936
– as well as informing our activities and strategies today.
First, the theory. As noted, the social revolution of 1936 was the
product of decades of anarchist organising and struggle – which raises
the obvious question of what is anarchism?
Simply put, it is freedom within association and can be summarised in
three words: Liberty, Equality, Solidarity. While many either through
ignorance or mischief portray anarchism as being against organisation,
in fact it supports self-organisation based on free Association and
federalism with groups run directly by their members – what anarchists
call self-management. This self-organisation is not something we
relegate to the distant future but apply now in our struggles today.
Unlike most political movements, anarchists reject the notion that
change can come from electing better politicians. Rather change must
come from below, by means of solidarity and direct action – strikes,
boycotts, occupations, etc. In this way we build the new world while
fighting the old. This means that the unions we create to fight the
bosses become the means to run workplaces without bosses, the groups we
create to fight for improvements in our communities become the means by
which we manage our own affairs without politicians.
Anarchists often call ourselves libertarian socialists. As such, a
future free society would see ownership undivided but use of resources
divided – rather than in state socialism where ownership and control
would rest in the hands of the bureaucrats, an anarchist society would
see everyone own everything but control rest in the hands of people who
actually use something. So rather than nationalisation, anarchists seek
socialisation based on free access and use rights (or possession).
Such a society would be a vast federation of self-managed groups – it
would be decentralisation and decentred with organisations based on
elections, mandates and recall. This would ensure that any committees
needed would be limited to administrative tasks carrying out the
instructions of their members. It would be a functional Democracy based
on workers’ control and run from below.
For more details, please read Rudolf Rocker’s classic work
Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (1937). However, to understand
the events of 1936 which I will describe, I need to summarise the ideas
which drove them:
Building the new world in the shell of the old – anarchists argue for,
to use Michael Bakunin’s words, the “development and organisation of the
non-political or anti-political social power of the working classes in
city and country” for the “organisation of the trade sections, their
federation in the International, and their representation by Chambers of
Labour […] bear in themselves the living germs of the social order,
which is to replace the bourgeois world. They are creating not only the
ideas but also the facts of the future itself.”
A new social organisation organised from below – based on, to quote
Peter Kropotkin, “independent Communes for the territorial groupings,
and vast federations of trade unions for groupings by social
functions—the two interwoven and providing support to each to meet the
needs of […] a liberated society”.
Expropriation, socialisation and workers’ control (self-management) –
the means, using Kropotkin’s words again, to achieve anarchism would be
to “expropriate the holders of social capital [...] by the workers
themselves [...] They will organise themselves in the workshops to
continue the work [...] they will take possession of it as if it had
never been stolen from them by the middle-class”.
Voluntary, Democratic Militias to defend freedom — while Marxists may
claim otherwise, anarchists recognised that the ruling class would not
accept the ending of their power and privileges and so anarchists, to
quote Errico Malatesta, argued for “voluntary militia […] to deal with
any armed attacks by the forces of reaction […] or to resist outside
intervention”.
Transformation of all social relations – the anarchist vision of
revolution was never limited to just ending capitalism or the state. We
seek to end all hierarchies as Emma Goldman suggested: “Only in freedom
can man grow to his full stature. Only in freedom will he learn to think
and move, and give the very best in him [...] individual liberty and
economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and
true in man”.
Needless to say, regardless of the claims of Marx and Engels, anarchists
recognise that transforming society would take time. We have always
rejected, to use Kropotkin’s expressed, the “fallacy of a ‘One-day
Revolution’” and recognised that “were we to wait for the Revolution to
display an openly communist or indeed collectivist character right from
its initial insurrections, that would be tantamount to throwing the idea
of Revolution overboard once and for all”. Social revolution, then, is a
process rather than an event and so a free society, as Bakunin put it,
“will develop and perfect itself through free experimentation […] The
development of each commune will take its point of departure the actual
condition of its civilisation.”
So, as Malatesta suggested, “could we overnight realise all desires and
pass from a governmental and capitalist hell to a libertarian-communist
heaven [...] ? These are illusions which can take root among
authoritarians who look upon the masses as the raw material which those
who have power can, by decrees, supported by bullets and handcuffs,
mould to their will.” Moreover, in the words of Italian anarchist Luigi
Fabbri, “class difference do not vanish at the stroke of a pen whether
that pen belongs to the theoreticians or to the pen-pushers who set out
laws or decrees. Only action, that is to say direct action (not through
government) expropriation by the proletarians, directed against the
privileged class, can wipe out class difference.”
I have spent some time on explaining the theory of anarchism because,
sadly, there are many myths spread about it and about Spanish anarchism
in particular. A common one is associated with the Marxist historian
Eric Hobsbawm who, in his book Primitive Rebels (1965), dismissed it as
“utopian, millenarian, apocalyptic”. However, to quote anthropologist
Jerome R. Mintz, “the facts prove otherwise”.
I would recommend Mintz’s book The Anarchists of Casas Viejas (1983) as
one of the best on the Spanish Anarchist movement by a non-anarchist. He
did something extremely unusual – he actually interviewed the people
involved in the movement Hobsbawm wrote about in his university office.
He proved that Hobsbawm’s account was “based primarily on a preconceived
evolutionary model of political development rather than on data gathered
in field research […] he explains how anarcho-syndicalists were presumed
to act rather than what actually took place […] to prove an already
established point of view”. Indeed, “level-headed anarchists were
astonished by such descriptions of supposed Spanish puritanism by
over-enthusiastic historians.” As Mintz suggests:
“at first glance the religious model seems to make anarchism easier to
understand, particularly in the absence of detailed observation and
intimate contact. The model was, however, also used to serve the
political ends of anarchism’s opponents. Here the use of the terms
‘religious’ and ‘millenarium’ stamp anarchist goals as unrealistic and
unattainable. Anarchism is thus dismissed as a viable solution to social
ills.”
In short, the “oversimplifications posited became serious distortions of
anarchist belief and practice”. Hence the need to summarise anarchist
theory before moving onto the Spanish Revolution – for you cannot
appreciate it being anarchy is action if you do not have a grasp of what
anarchism actually advocates.
The Spanish Civil War is usually considered as a forerunner of the
Second World War – a struggle between the Spanish Republic and Franco’s
fascist forces. This is not quite the case for the Spanish Labour
movement, thanks to the influence of anarchists, was the most
revolutionary one in the world. The CNT, a mass anarcho-syndicalist
union, rightly saw the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s as a
product of capitalism’s fear of revolution.
To fight fascism effectively meant to fight the system that spawned it.
Hence the CNT National Committee on 14 February 1936:
“We are not the defenders of the Republic, but we fight against fascism
relentlessly, we will contribute all of the forces that we have to rout
the historical executioners of the Spanish proletariat […] ensure that
the defensive contribution of the masses lead in the direction of real
social revolution, under the auspices of libertarian communism...”
“Either fascism or social revolution. Defeating the former is the duty
of the whole proletariat and all those who love freedom, weapons in
hand; that the revolution be social and libertarian must be the deepest
concern of Confederates.”
In short, the CNT was not fighting fascism to maintain an exploitative
and oppressive system in which a nominally democratic government
protects an economic system mired in years of depression. It was
fighting fascism for a better society – and it was this fear which had
driven ruling classes across Europe to embrace fascism to protect
themselves.
These were the ideas which were commonplace in working class circles in
many parts of Spain in 1936. Yet, as Chomsky noted, the social
revolution of 1936 dates back decades and starts in 1868 with the
formation of Spanish section of the International Workers’ Association.
State repression soon saw this smashed but it was replaced by other
union federations which suffered the same fate.
Then, in 1911 the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) was founded –
and was quickly banned. Legalised again, it surged in membership as
workers in Spain (as elsewhere) were radicalised by the First World War
and the Russian Revolution. 1919 saw the CNT declare at its national
congress that its objective as libertarian communism. It was soon banned
by the quasi-fascist Primo de Rivera regime. While the CNT was banned in
the 1920s, in 1927 the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) – a specially
anarchist federation – was founded.
In 1931 the Second Republic was created. The CNT re-organises and leads
countless strikes and revolts – all faced repression by the liberal
republic. Two years later, in 1933, a right-wing government was elected
and, again, numerous libertarian revolts were crushed and the CNT
repressed. In 1934 an insurrection in Asturias and Catalonia called by
the UGT-run Workers Alliance is crushed. 1936 is the year of civil war
and revolution as 19^(th) February sees the Popular Front elected. The
CNT starts to re-organise. On 17^(th) July the Army revolts against the
Republic, starting in Morocco but soon spreads across Spain. The
government is paralysed – the workers’ organisations, with the CNT and
FAI at their head, respond and draw upon their years of experience in
the class struggle to resist the army.
I cannot cover all the popular resistance and so will concentrate on
what happened on the 19^(th) of July in Barcelona. The troops started to
leave their barracks around 5am, with the officers claiming to be
defending the republic against (yet another) an anarchist uprising. The
CNT declares a general strike and factory sirens called the masses onto
the streets. Libertarians seize weapons wherever they could and
barricades are build --some assault and civil guards join the
resistance. Fighting takes place all day and into the next. The Army
revolt is finally ended with the storming of the final rebel barracks
(the Andreu barracks).
All this, I must stress, was no spontaneous response. It was prepared
and organised by libertarian “committees of defence” in Barcelona’s
working-class neighbourhoods as well as by CNT unions – not to mention
years of strikes, rent strikes, street fighting, etc. However, while the
fighting was organised the subsequent Revolution was spontaneous – it
was created by militants who had taken Kropotkin’s call to “act for
yourselves” seriously.
Where the army had been defeated, the people took the opportunity to
transform society into one worthy of human beings. Anarchist militant
Enriqueta Rovira paints a vivid picture:
“The atmosphere then, the feelings were very special. It was beautiful.
A feeling of – how shall I say it – of power, not in the sense of
domination, but in the sense of things being under our control, if under
anyone’s. Of possibility. We had everything. We had Barcelona: It was
ours. You’d walk out in the streets, and they were ours – here, CNT;
there, comite this or that. It was totally different. Full of
possibility. A feeling that we could, together, really do something.
That we could make things different.”
The workers did not go back to being wage-slaves but expropriated their
workplaces. The days and weeks following the 19^(th) of July saw the
collectivisation of industry and the land. About eight million people
directly or indirectly participated, with over 60% of the land
collectively cultivated by the peasants without landlords while in
Catalonia almost all the industries run by workers and their committees,
without capitalists, well-paid managers or the state. Every branch of
industry was taken over and run by their workers – factories, mills,
workshops, transportation, public services, health care, utilities, even
football teams. As visitor Emma Goldman recounted:
“I was especially impressed with the replies to my questions as to what
actually had the workers gained by the collectivisation [...] the answer
always was, first, greater freedom. And only secondly, more wages and
less time of work. In two years in Russia I never heard any workers
express this idea of greater freedom.”
The Spanish Revolution created a socialism which was based on workers’
control rather than, as in the Russian Revolution, controlled workers.
The new collectives were structured like the CNT and its strikes and so
based on, as historian Martha A. Ackelsberg put it, “general assemblies
of workers [which] decided policy, while elected committees managed
affairs on a day-to-day basis”. The collectives showed that capitalists
were not needed for investment and innovation either, for “they
maintained, if not increased, agricultural production, often introducing
new patterns of cultivation and fertilisation [...] collectivists built
chicken coups, barns, and other facilities for the care and feeding of
the community’s animals. Federations of collectives co-ordinated the
construction of roads, schools, bridges, canals and dams.”
While individual workplaces were taken over by their workers,
federations were seen as a means to co-ordinate and socialise the
economy. The CNT was well aware of the need “[t]o socialise an industry”
as “partial collectivisation will in time degenerate into a kind of
bourgeois co-operativism”. As anarchist theorists had predicted, the
process of federation and socialisation took time and developed
unevenly. However, as CNT militant Saturnino Carod reminds us:
“For it can never be forgotten that it was the working class and
peasantry which, by demonstrating their ability to run industry and
agriculture collectively, allowed the republic to continue the struggle
for thirty-two months. It was they who created a war industry, who kept
agricultural production increasing, who formed militias [...] Without
their creative endeavour, the republic could not have fought the war”.
Getting the economy running again was not the pressing task facing the
members of the CNT. Franco had only been defeated across three-thirds of
Spain and so the defence of the revolution predicted by anarchist
thinkers had an even greater urgency. This led to the organisation of
militias by the CNT and other unions and parties. However, the CNT’s
armed forces were based on libertarian principles as militant
Buenaventura Durruti summarised:
“I don’t believe—and everything happening around us confirms this— that
you can run a workers’ militia according to classical military rules. I
believe that discipline, coordination, and planning are indispensable,
but we shouldn’t define them in the terms of the world that we’re
destroying. We have to build on new foundations.”
It should be noted that only the CNT militias were democratic, those
organised by Marxist parties like the POUM and PSUC were modelled on Red
Army.
As well as organising militias to free those under Army rule elsewhere
in Spain, the workers of the CNT took the initiative in creating war
industries by the conversion of existing industry to produce home-made
armed vehicles, grenades, etc. However, it was not forgotten that a key
measure to defend the revolution and defeat the forces of reaction was
the interest and active participation of the many rather than power to a
few. As Pilar Vivancos, a collective member, put it:
“it was marvellous to live in a collective, a free society where one
could say what one thought, where if the village committee seemed
unsatisfactory one could say. The committee took no big decisions
without calling the whole village together in a general assembly. All
this was wonderful.”
As well as transforming the economy, the social revolution also looked
to transform all aspects of social life. Women activists of the CNT and
FAI created the Mujeres Libres (Free Women) movement which was organised
to fight against the “triple enslavement to ignorance, as women, and as
producers” and recognised the interwoven nature of social oppressions
and hierarchies:
“We could not separate the women’s problem from the social problem, nor
could we deny [its] significance […] by converting women into a simple
instrument for any organisation, even our own libertarian organisation.
The intention […] was much much broader: […] to empower women to make of
them individuals capable of contributing to the structuring of the
future society, individuals who have learned to be self-determining”
This was needed because, in spite of a theoretical awareness of the need
for sexual equality, many male anarchists in Spain practiced manarchy in
action. Thus patriarchy within the libertarian movement also had to be
combated as Kyralina, a Mujeres Libres activist, argued:
“All those compañeros, however radical they may be in cafes, unions, and
even affinity groups, seem to drop their costumes as lovers of female
liberation at the doors of their homes. Inside, they behave with their
compañeras just like common husbands.”
Another, Soledad, stressed that “[i]t was essential that we work and
struggle together, because otherwise, there would be no social
revolution. But we needed our own organisation to fight for ourselves.”
This was based, to use the words of Lucia Sanchez Saornil, empowerment
(capacitación):
“It is not [the man] who is called upon to set out the roles and
responsibilities of the woman in society, no matter how elevated he
might consider them to be. No, the anarchist way is to allow the woman
to act freely herself, without tutors or external pressures; that she
may develop in the direction that her nature and her faculties dictate.”
With this perspective Mujeres Libres were active across Republican Spain
and created alternatives which undercut patriarchy wherever it raised
its ugly head – including in the CNT and FAI.
Thus a new world was created across Spain, one which transformed every
aspect of life – from the economic to the personal. A world which George
Orwell vividly recounted when he arrived in Barcelona in December 1936:
“The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the
revolution was still in full swing. [...] It was the first time that I
had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle.
Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers
and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the
Anarchists [...] Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the
future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and
freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as
cogs in the capitalist machine.”
After 19^(th) July, the members of the CNT started to build the
beginnings of Anarchy. Workplaces and land expropriated and
collectivised under workers control while union- and party-based
militias were organised to defeat Franco’s forces.
Yet, was the State smashed and replaced by a federation of workers’
organisations as anarchism had long argued? No – the CNT in Barcelona
decided to cooperate with other anti-fascist groups in a Central
Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias. As they later recounted, the
leadership of the CNT decided “not to speak about Libertarian Communism
as long as part of Spain was in the hands of the fascists.” This
eventually led to the CNT joining the Catalan and Spanish governments
and were quickly marginalised
The question is: why? Was this anarchist theory or the situation facing
anarchists? As anarchist theory was ignored, it must be the second.
For, lest we forget, immediately after the defeat of the Army in
Barcelona the CNT was isolated – it had no idea what the situation was
elsewhere, even elsewhere in Catalonia. Then there was the danger of
fighting on two fronts if libertarian communism was declared as there
was distinct possibility of having to fight Franco and the Republican
State in that case. Then there was the fear of wider foreign
intervention against the revolution beyond the help Franco received from
Germany and Italy. Finally, there was optimism in the membership who had
just defeated the Army in Barcelona and so were willing to tolerate the
remnants of the State for a short period while Franco was defeated –
particularly as there was so much else to do like organise militias and
an economy.
All these factors help explain the decision to ignore Anarchist theory
rather than push for libertarian communism even if it does not justify
it nor make it correct.
Ultimately, the decision of the CNT to avoid fighting on two fronts did
not mean it did not happen. The remnants of the State and the capitalist
class regrouped and pursued a counter-revolution. At its head was the
Communist Party – and this party soon created a civil war within the
civil war.
In Spain, it sided with the urban and rural petit-bourgeois and
bourgeois to (finally) get a mass base and undermined the gains of the
revolution while USSR shaped Government Policy by supplying weapons (and
to get its claws on Spanish gold). The attack on the revolution reached
its climax in the May Days of 1937 which began with a government attack
on Barcelona’s collectivised telephone exchange. This saw CNT members
raise barricades across the city while the Communist and State forces
assassinated anarchist activists (including Italian anarchist and
refugee from Mussolini, Camilo Berneri). Elsewhere, saw the destruction
of the rural collectives by use of troops and tanks while falsely
claiming the peasants were forced to join – at the same time praising
Stalin’s collectivisation!
As well as using troops and tanks against peasants rather than Franco’s
troops, the State denied resources and weapons to libertarian troops and
collectives. George Orwell stated the obvious:
“A government which sends boys of fifteen to the front with rifles forty
years old and keeps its biggest men and newest weapons in the rear is
manifestly more afraid of the revolution the fascists”
Finally, I should note the political repression and trials of radicals –
starting with the dissent Marxists of the POUM as “Trotsky-Fascists”
(although Trotsky had few, if any, kind words for the party). It was
experiencing this at first hand which forced Orwell – a member of the
POUM militia – to flee Spain.
Yes, ultimately the revolution was defeated but it must be stressed that
every political grouping failed – anarchists, socialists, Stalinists,
the POUM and the handful of Trotskyists.
In areas were the socialist UGT was bigger than the CNT the revolution
was correspondingly less. As anarchist Abel Paz notes “in Madrid, thanks
to the Socialist Party, bourgeois structures were left intact and even
fortified: a semi-dead state received a new lease of life and no dual
power was created to neutralise it.” In terms of the Stalinists, they
defeated the revolution, replaced the militias with an army, placated
the bourgeoisie but Franco still won. So the Communist solution
completely failed – the People Armed won the revolution, the People’s
Army lost the war.
The Spain labour movement clearly vindicated the anarchist critique of
Marxism. While the anarchist influenced unions remained militant, the
socialists soon became as reformist as Bakunin predicted:
“the workers [...] will send common workers [...] to [...] Legislative
Assemblies. [...] The worker-deputies, transplanted into a bourgeois
environment, into an atmosphere of purely bourgeois political ideas,
will in fact cease to be workers and, becoming Statesmen, they will
become bourgeois, and perhaps even more bourgeois than the Bourgeois
themselves. For men do not make their situations; on the contrary, men
are made by them”.
Indeed, it was the libertarian labour movement which was the innovative
trend – so much so, many Marxists often point to the Spanish Revolution
as an example of socialist revolution! As such, Engels was completely
wrong when he proclaimed in the 1870s that “we may safely predict that
the new departure will not come from these ‘anarchist’ spouters, but
from the small body of intelligent and energetic workmen who, in 1872,
remained true to the International.”
The reasons are clear enough – as anarchists had long argued, organising
and fighting on the economic plain radicalised those involved rather
than producing the apathy and reformism associated with electioneering.
Likewise, the anarchist critique involved all social hierarchies and
oppressions which meant – to use the words of historian J. Romero Maura
– that “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, anarcho-syndicalism made
demands the capitalist system could not possibly grant to the workers.”
It should also be noted that Anarchism itself had predicted the failure
of the revolution. Kropotkin, for example, had repeatedly stressed that
“a new form of economic organisation will necessarily require a new form
of political structure” but the CNT refused to do this out of a desire
to promote anti-fascist unity. However, in practice this cooperation
within non-worker organisations did little to aid the revolution nor
even the fight against fascism. As Kropotkin had suggested:
“what means can the State provide to abolish this monopoly that the
working class could not find in its own strength and groups? […] Could
its governmental machine, developed for the creation and upholding of
these [class] privileges, now be used to abolish them? Would not the new
function require new organs? And these new organs would they not have to
be created by the workers themselves, in their unions, their
federations, completely outside the State?”
The experience of 1936 reinforces this argument for Anarchists did not
fully apply Anarchist ideas and disaster resulted. In short, as British
anarchist Vernon Richards put it, the CNT-FAI “failed to put their
theories to the test, adopting the tactics of the enemy”. Rather than,
to use Bakunin’s words, create “the federative Alliance of all working
men’s associations “in order to “constitute the Commune” and so “the
federation of insurgent associations” to “organise a revolutionary force
capable of defeating reaction” the CNT in Barcelona Central Committee of
Anti-Fascist Militias. Instead of this body it should have called a full
plenum of CNT unions and neighbourhood defence committees with delegates
invited from UGT and unorganised workplaces. Only this would have built
the popular federations which could have successfully resisted Franco
and defended the revolution.
The decision to work with other anti-fascist parties and unions was
understandable but such co-operation had to be based on popular
organisation from below. Anti-Fascism is not enough – the need remains
to destroy the system which spawns it. As Scottish Anarchist Ethel
McDonald put it:
“Fascism is not something new, some new force of evil opposed to
society, but is only the old enemy, Capitalism, under a new and fearful
sounding name [...] Anti-Fascism is the new slogan by which the working
class is being betrayed.”
However, the most important lesson of the revolution is that libertarian
socialism worked – but this is usually downplayed or ignored by
“objective” historians. As Noam Chomsky argues, “there is more than
enough evidence to show that a deep bias against social revolution and a
commitment to the values and social order of liberal bourgeois democracy
has led the author to misrepresent crucial events and to overlook major
historical currents.” The revolution shows that products and services
can be provided to workers, by workers without bosses and bureaucrats.
It shows that there is a viable alternative to both privatisation and
nationalisation in the form of socialisation and associationism.
This is why the Spanish Revolution should be remembered today. As Orwell
put it, it was “a foretaste of Socialism […] the prevailing mental
atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of
civilised life – snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc. –
had simply ceased to exist [...] no one owned anyone else as his master
[...] One had breathed the air of equality”. It shows that a genuine
socialist alternative exists and works. As Durruti memorably put it at
the Aragon Front:
“We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how
to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, we can
also build. It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here
in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build
others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least
afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the
slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own
world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here,
in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.”
These words, like the revolution that inspired them, should inspire all
seekers of liberty today.
The experience of Spain in the 1930s shows that it is not enough to just
oppose fascism for, after all, defending the status quo is hardly
inspiring. This helps explain the often limited appeal of campaigns
today against the far-right in which the critique of the social problems
which the right blame on scapegoats is muted in the interest of widening
the campaign. This portrays the left as being part of the problem rather
than the solution by linking it with those who benefit from the system.
As Chomsky noted long ago:
“Why should a liberal intellectual be so persuaded of the virtues of a
political system of four-year dictatorship? The answer seems all too
plain.”
It also shows that revolutions cannot be half-made. Even in the face of
immanent threat of Franco’s troops, the so-called anti-fascist parties
spent time and resources crushing the revolution and the CNT-FAI. It is
hard to not draw the conclusion that the Republicans seemed to prefer
fascism to anarchism. As such, attempts to limit the revolution was a
fatal error by the CNT-FAI leadership.
However, we must not forget that Anarchists failed, not Anarchism.
Unlike the Russian Revolution, which failed because Marxist theory was
applied, in Spain the revolution failed because theory not applied. Yet
for all the errors and limitations, the social revolution of 1936 was
Anarchy in Action and remains an inspiration for today – although, of
course, one to be learned from rather than idolised.
For this interested in finding out more about the Revolution and the
CNT, I can suggest the following books:
Finally, An Anarchist FAQ (www.anarchistfaq.org) has more information
about both the social revolution and the libertarian ideas which
inspired it.
There were two additional sections which were originally included in the
main presentation but excluded for time considerations. However, they
were held in reserve in case there were any Trotskyists in the audience
and used to refute the points they were sure to make. On the day, they
were not needed as no one raised the points these addressed but in the
interests of completeness I decided to include them now.
Like anarchism itself, the Spanish Anarchist movement is subject to a
great many myths. I cannot cover them all here but I will address three
of the most grating ones.
The first is the notion that the CNT opposed defending a Revolution
before July 1936. This was expressed by historian Hugh Thomas who
claimed that at the CNT’s May 1936 National Congress there was “no
agreement, in consequence, on the arming of militias”. In reality, the
CNT passed a resolution on libertarian communists which had a whole
section on the defence of the revolution which stated, in part, that the
“necessary measures for defending the new regime will be adopted” which
include “organised, armed forces” for “[t]he People Armed will be the
best guarantee against all intentions of restoring the destroyed regime
by forces from within or without”.
Likewise, many Marxists suggest that the collectivisation which occurred
after the defeat of Franco’s coup reflected anarchist ideology. Yet such
collectivisation was never CNT policy for it had aimed explicitly for
libertarian communism since 1919. Rather, it was a spontaneous product
of the situation for “[f]inding the factories deserted, and no
instructions from their unions, [the workers] resolved to operate the
machines themselves” as eyewitness Abel Paz recounted. While such
expropriation and workers’ control were a key aspect of anarchist
theory, both were always considered as just a first step towards
socialisation. This process was hindered by the CNT’s decision to
cooperate with the State as, the CNT militant Gaston Level later noted,
the government’s Collectivisation Decree “had the baneful effect of
preventing the workers’ syndicates from extending their gains. It set
back the revolution in industry”.
Finally, there is the notion popular with Marxists that the CNT – like
anarchism in general – fails to see the need for an alternative
socio-economic organisation like their so-called “workers’ State.” This
is false, as can be seen from the works of anarchist thinkers like
Bakunin and Kropotkin as well as the CNT’s resolution on libertarian
communism which stressed that “it all begins in the individual, passes
to the Commune, from the Commune it moves to the Federation, and
finally, to the Confederation.” The problem in 1936 was that the CNT
decided not to build such a federation.
Given the failure of the revolution, Trotskyists argue that this shows
the failure of anarchism itself, that the ideas of Anarchists are the
issue for any revolution need a “workers’ State” to succeed.
This position is flawed for many reasons, not least because it ignores
the “objective circumstances” facing the CNT-FAI (something they always
stress when it comes to the Bolsheviks). It also ignores the Council of
Aragon which was created by the same ideas (and even the same people)
but which had a different outcome. Finally, it ignores the reality and
fate of the Bolshevik regime which quickly became the dictatorship over
the proletariat politically and an inefficient bureaucratic
state-capitalism economically.
It should also be noted that all this talk of the need for a “democratic
workers’ State” was not uttered in the 1930s. Rather, Trotsky argued at
the time for party power rather than workers’ power for a “revolutionary
party, even having seized power (of which the anarchist leaders were
incapable in spite of the heroism of the anarchist workers), is still by
no means the sovereign ruler of society”. Not learning anything from the
failure of the Russian Revolution, he stressed that the “revolutionary
dictatorship of a proletarian party [...] is an objective necessity
[...] The dictatorship of a party […] Because the leaders of the CNT
renounced dictatorship for themselves they left the place open for the
Stalinist dictatorship”.
Unsurprisingly, Trotsky’s ideas were unappealing for while the CNT, FAI
and the non-Trotskyist POUM all increased massively in membership after
July 1936, Trotskyist numbers in Spain stayed at around twenty – but
they succeeded in producing a 100% increase in the number of Trotskyist
groups, from one to two by splitting.
In short, the CNT rightly rejected the Trotskyist position and refused
to recreate the errors of the Bolshevik revolution. Sadly, it also
rejected the anarchist position.