💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › martha-ackelsberg-then-and-now.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:27:59. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Then and now Author: Martha Ackelsberg Date: 2021, Summer Language: en Topics: Spain, Spanish Revolution, anarchist analysis, current relevance Source: Fifth Estate #409, Summer, 2021. Accessed Juy 27, 2022 at https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/409-summer-2021/then-and-now/
July 19 marks the 85th anniversary of the Spanish Revolution.
This seems an opportune time, then, to reflect on multiple aspects of
that revolution. It began as a response to an attempted right-wing
military coup against the legally-elected left-wing government, unfolded
in the midst of a brutal civil war, and came to an end with the victory
of fascist armies in the spring of 1939.
Although conditions—both in Spain and elsewhere have changed
dramatically in the years since, there are lessons to be learned from
the efforts of worker-led organizations to confront the right-wing
challenges of their day.
First, something about the context. Anarcho-syndicalism had been growing
in Spain since the last quarter of the 19th century. By 1936, the
movement was comprised of a powerful labor union organization (the
ConfederaciĂłn Nacional del Trabajo, CNT, National Confederation of
Labor) that counted roughly one million workers among its members; an
affinity group-based anarchist organization (the FederaciĂłn Anarquista
Ibérica, Iberian Anarchist Federation, FAI); and a youth organization
(Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias, FIJL, Iberian Federation
of Libertarian Youth).
These organizations had affiliates in many areas of the country, but
were especially strong in Catalonia, Valencia, Aragon, and AndalucĂa. A
network of journals, newspapers, schools emphasizing free thought,
storefront cultural centers, and community/neighborhood-based
organizations extended movement influence considerably beyond
conventional workplaces, and allowed its anti-hierarchical message of
direct action, collective self-help, and anti-authoritarianism to reach
both men and women, employed and unemployed, adults and youth.
Importantly, however, although movement organizations had committed
themselves from early dates (1872, 1910, and again in 1936) to the
equality of men and women as a central component of
anarchist/libertarian theory and practice, the day-to-day reality on the
ground was quite different.
Most movement organizations, especially labor unions, even in industries
such as textiles, where female workers were the majority, were dominated
by men. Women workers were often paid lower wages, ignored or ridiculed
if they tried to speak in meetings, and dismissed as potential movement
leaders or activists.
Accordingly, as early as the mid-1920s, when the CNT unions were still
operating clandestinely, and then well into the early 1930s, groups of
mostly young anarchist women in Madrid, Barcelona, and elsewhere who had
felt marginalized in their organizations, began to meet among themselves
to discuss what they could do to empower other women and to challenge
their male comrades to live up to the officially-stated commitments to
equality.
In early 1936, a group in Barcelona that called itself Grupo Cultural
Femenino, CNT, rented a hall in Barcelona and held a mass meeting to
address issues of women’s subordination. Participants came from all over
the country included among them, LucĂa Sánchez Saornil and Mercedes
Comaposada, who had met in Madrid and started talking and organizing
women there. Together, they decided to form an organization to address
the “triple enslavement” of women (to ignorance, to capital, and as
women); shortly thereafter, the first issue of a new journal, Mujeres
Libres (Free Women) appeared.
Much of the historiography of the Spanish Civil War presents it as a
battle of Communists vs. fascists for the preservation of republican
democracy in Spain. But the reality is that the initial attempted
right-wing coup (led by four generals, among them, Francisco Franco) was
meant to overthrow the liberal Popular Front coalition that had been
elected in April 1936.
The opposition to the coup was led by revolutionary popular
organizations, both socialist and anarchist, that took to the streets,
stormed armories for weapons, and defeated the right-wing rebels in many
major cities. What followed was complex.
Many of the landowners and factory owners who sympathized with the
rebels abandoned their properties and fled to the rebel-held zone. This
enabled union-based organizations, especially in Barcelona, Valencia and
Aragon, to take over workplaces—both rural and industrial—and run them
collectively under systems of worker control. In Aragon, in particular,
many small agricultural holdings were collectivized.
In many parts of Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia, municipal services were
taken over by workers, and reorganized to serve the people who were left
in the cities and to organize the provision of food and other
necessities. Workers took over factories and repurposed them to produce
war materiel.
Men, and some women, left the cities to join people’s militias to fight
the fascist rebels. Whole systems of social organization were created,
virtually overnight.
Meanwhile, internationally, the so-called democratic nations of the west
mostly watched and waited. In August, England, France, the U.S., the
USSR, Germany and Italy signed a non-intervention agreement, pledging
not to send arms or war materiel to either side in the fighting, but
Germany and Italy announced almost from the outset that they would not
abide by it.
In fact, German and Italian arms and soldiers started pouring into Spain
in support of the fascist rebels almost immediately. Germans tested
their carpet-bombing techniques (later to be used during WWII) on
Guernica and Madrid. Troops from both countries supported the rebel
military’s effort to crush the left-wing and anarchist resistance.
Meanwhile, the U.S., UK and France refused aid to the Republic, which
was left dependent on the USSR and Mexico for the purchase of arms to
try to defeat the rebellion. Over time, that dependence dramatically
increased the power of the previously very weak Communist Party in
Spain, and eventually led to government efforts to stem the revolution
in the name of fighting fascism first.
Contemporary left organizations around the world are confronting a
somewhat similar, and often hostile, political, economic and cultural
climate. Economic inequality is increasing everywhere. Exacerbated by
COVID-related deaths and dislocations, the forces of international
finance have been pushing hard against programs that would mitigate the
worst consequences of that inequality.
Today’s so-called populist resentment that we are witnessing
internationally has been fueled precisely by frustration with economic
restructuring and a sense that dominant political elites are not paying
sufficient attention to those most hurt by economic and technological
change. We have seen a weakening of labor movements in many countries
through a combination of corruption and anti-labor policies.
At the same time, women’s movements are continuing to grow, even though
(with the recent exception of Argentina) they have not always been able
to stop moves to the right that threaten hard-won rights for greater
equality and bodily autonomy. In many of these respects, we find
parallels to the situation that confronted anarcho-syndicalists in
Spain, and Mujeres Libres, in particular.
The Spanish economy of the 1930s was very unevenly developed and
characterized by extreme levels of inequality. The election of the
Popular Front government in 1936 both generated high expectations for
change on the part of working people, but fueled the fears of landowners
and industrialists about precisely such demands for change.
Meanwhile, international capital, frightened by strikes and talk of
revolution, abandoned the legally-elected government and largely sided
with Franco and his fascist forces. The ability of the government to
develop and implement policies to benefit its working-class supporters
was severely limited. In areas where left organizations were strong,
particularly in Catalonia, around Madrid, and in Valencia, workers took
over factories abandoned by their owners, collectivized many rural
properties, and attempted to meet their needs through direct action.
In this context, Mujeres Libres advocated for the full and equal
incorporation of women into the resistance, the revolutionary project,
and the planning for the world they struggled to bring into being. As
opposed to those who said that the time was not right for attention to
women’s issues, and that they should wait “until the morrow of the
revolution,” they insisted that the only way to win the war and to
achieve its revolutionary goals was to engage women, to enable them to
overcome their illiteracy and their subordinate status, and to
participate fully in the society.
They did not—could not—rely on government to meet their needs, to offer
literacy classes, or training and apprenticeship programs, or to provide
for child-care. In the midst of full-scale civil war, they developed
practices to create the world in which they wished to live. They
demanded that their comrades acknowledge and respect their differences
as women, and their specific concerns about sexuality, support for and
planning for maternity and child-care, and broad-based education, even
as they insisted on being treated as fully equal members of the
libertarian community.
While their activities, and the revolutionary project in general, were
brought to a halt by the victory of fascist forces in the spring of
1939, the revolutionary legacy continues. Activists who went into exile
in southern France, in Mexico, or in Canada retained their commitments,
joined local union organizations, and forged long-term political
relationships with younger people in their adopted communities.
Their stories of struggle, disappointment, and triumphs still inspire.
Martha Ackelsberg is the author of Free Women of Spain: Mujeres Libres
and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women (AK Press), and of
numerous articles and book chapters on women’s activism in Spain, the
United States and Latin America. She lives in New York City and devotes
her time to activism around issues of racial justice.
[]