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Title: Revolution, or Self-Managed Capitalism?
Author: Wildcat,
Date: 1986
Language: en
Topics: Spain 1936, capitalism, critique, marxist
Source: Retrieved on 8 April 2012 from http://www.angelfire.com/pop2/pkv/spain.html

Wildcat,

Revolution, or Self-Managed Capitalism?

This year is the 50^(th) anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, which

began in July 1936 when General Franco led a fascist coup to replace the

left-wing republican government.

It was no coincidence that this happened at a time of intense class

struggle in Spain. Limited concessions granted by the left-wing of the

ruling class — the Popular Front government elected in February 1936 —

had not succeeded in in restoring the economic and social stability

needed by capitalism. Strikes, demonstrations and political

assassinations by the working class continued, as did land seizures and

local insurrections in the countryside. The right-wing of the ruling

class recognised that strong-arm measures were needed and acted

accordingly.

Initially, across one half of Spain the right-wing coup was stalled by

armed resistance from peasants and the working class, and only after

three years of civil war was the fascist victory secured. But in one

sense the fascist revolt was an immediate success: the working class and

peasants sacrificed the struggle for their own needs and demands and

united with liberal and radical supporters of capitalism in a fight to

defend one form of capitalist domination — democracy — against another —

fascism.

We have already written about this aspect of the Spanish War in in a

previous issue of Wildcat (number 7). In this article, we want to focus

on another important feature: the influence of Anarchist ideas during

the events in Spain.

Anarchism and the Spanish ‘Revolution’

At the time of the war, a popular idea amongst the Spanish working class

and peasants was that each factory, area of land etc., should be owned

collectively by its workers, and that these ‘collectives’ should be

linked together on a ‘federal basis’ — that is, without any ‘superior

central authority’.

This basic idea had been propagated by Anarchists in Spain for more than

50 years. When the war began, peasants and and working class people in

those parts of the country that had not immediately fallen under fascist

control seized the opportunity to turn the Anarchist idea into reality.

And ever since then, Anarchists have have regarded the Spanish

‘Revolution’ as the finest achievement in the history of the

revolutionary movement — as the closest capitalism anywhere has come to

be being completely overthrown and replaced by a totally different type

of society.

Self-Managed Capitalism

The ‘revolution’ in the countryside has usually been seen as superior to

the ‘revolution’ in the towns and cities. Indeed, in an assessment

shared by Wildcat, Anarchist historian and eyewitness of the

collectives, Gaston Leval, describes the industrial collectives as

simply another form of capitalism, managed by the workers themselves:

‘Workers in each undertaking took over the factory, the works, or the

workshop, the machines, raw materials, and taking advantage of the

continuation of the money system and normal capitalist commercial

relations, organised production on their own account, selling for their

own benefit the produce of their labour.’

We would add that in many cases the workers didn’t actually take over

production, they simply worked under the direction of their ‘own’ union

bureaucrats with old bosses retained as advisors.

The reactionary consequences of the working class taking sides in the

fight between democracy and fascism, instead of pursuing the struggle

for their own needs, was particularly evident in the way the industrial

collectives operated. For the sake of the ‘war effort’ workers

frequently chose to intensify their own exploitation — usually with the

encouragement of their Anarchist leaders.

In 1937, for example, the Anarchist Government Minister in charge of the

economy in Catalonia complained that the ‘state of tension and

over-excitement’ caused by the outbreak of civil war had ‘reduced to a

dangerous degree the capacity and productivity of labour, increasing the

costs of production so much that if this is not corrected rapidly and

energetically, we will be facing a dead-end street. For these reasons we

must readjust the length of the working day.’

However, although some Anarchists are prepared to criticise the

‘Government Anarchists’ and the industrial collectives, all Anarchists

are unanimous that the rural collectives succeeded in achieving ‘genuine

socialisation’, or as it was termed, ‘libertarian communism’.

Organising the Rural Collectives

What typically happened in the peasant collectives was this. Once the

fascist rebellion had been quelled locally, the inhabitants of the

village got together in a big meeting. Anarchist militants took the

initiative in proposing what to do. Everyone was invited to to pool

their land, livestock, and tools in the collective: ‘The concept “yours

and mine” will no longer exist ... everything will belong to everyone.’

Property belonging to fascist landlords and the Church was expropriated

for the collective’s use. A committee was elected to supervise the

running of the collective. Work was parcelled out among groups of 10 or

15 people, and co-ordinated by meetings of delegates nominated by each

group.

Free Access

A few collectives did distribute their produce on the communist basis of

free access — ‘to each according to their needs’. A resident of

Magdalena de Pulpis explained the system in his village:

‘Everyone works and everyone has the right to what he needs free of

charge. He simply goes to the store where provisions and all other

necessities are supplied. Everything is is distributed freely with only

a notation of what he took.’

For the first time in their lives people could help themselves to

whatever they needed. And that’s exactly what they did. Free access was

not abused by ‘greed’ or ‘gluttony’. Another witness, Augustin Souchy,

described the situation in Muniesa:

‘The bakery was open. Anyone can come for any bread he wants.’

“Are there not abuses of this?”

“No”, answers the old man who gives out the bread. “Everyone takes as

much as they actually need.”

Wine is also distributed freely, not rationed.

“Doesn’t anyone get drunk?”

“So far there has not been a single case of drunkenness”, he answers.’

This of course was also partly a reflection of an Anarchist puritanism

which in other places led them to ban tobacco and even coffee.

The Wages System

However, distribution of goods on a communist basis (i.e. free access)

was not the norm. In the vast majority of collectives the level of

consumption was not based on people’s freely chosen needs and desires,

but just as it is under capitalism, by the amount of money people had in

their pockets. Only goods in abundant supply could be taken freely.

Everything else had to be bought from wages paid by the collective to

its members.

Family Values

The ‘family wage’, which oppresses women by making them economically

dependent on the male head of the household, was adopted by almost all

of the collectives. Each male collectivist received so much in wages per

day for himself, plus a smaller amount for his wife and each child. For

women in fact, the Spanish ‘Revolution’ could hardly have been less

revolutionary.

It did not challenge the family as an economic unit of society, nor the

sexual division of labour between men and women. ‘It is eleven o’clock

in the morning. The gong sounds. Mass? It is to remind the women to

prepare the midday meal.’ Women also remained regarded as inferior

social beings, frowned on, for example, if they joined the men in the

local cafe for a drink after work.

The Proliferation of Money

The equal family wage was generally not paid in the national currency,

which most collectives discarded for internal use. In its place the

collectives substituted other means of exchange, issuing their own local

currency in the form of vouchers, coupons, rationing booklets,

certificates, etc. Far from being abolished as it would be during a

communist revolution, during the Spanish ‘Revolution’ money proliferated

as never before!

But the creation of literally hundreds of different currencies soon

caused problems. Few collectives were self-sufficient, but trade among

the collectives was hampered by the lack of a universally acceptable

currency. In 1937 the Aragon Federation of Peasant Collectives had to

reintroduce a standard currency in the form of a standard rationing

booklet for all the Aragon collectives. It also established its own bank

— run by the Bank Workers Union of course!

The Exchange of Goods

Not all transactions between collectives were affected by money. Central

warehouses were set up where collectives exchanged their surplus product

among themselves for the goods they lacked. Under this system ‘hard

cash’ was was frequently absent. However, the relative proportions in

which goods were bartered was still determined by monetary values. For

example how many sacks of flour a collective could could obtain in

exchange for a ton of potatoes was worked out by determining the value

of both in money terms. Just as under capitalism, prices were ‘based on

the cost of raw materials, the work involved, general expenses and the

resources of the collectivists’.

This was not a communist system of production for use and distribution

according to need, but a capitalist system of rival enterprises trading

their products according to their exchange value. No matter how

desperately they needed them, collectives could not obtain the goods

they required until they had produced enough to exchange for them, since

they were not allowed to withdraw a sum of goods more than those they

had deposited. This frequently led to great hardship among the less

wealthy collectives.

Market Competition

As well as trading among themselves, collectives also had to find

markets for their goods in competition with non-collectivised

enterprises. A common consequence of this system has always been that

goods which cannot be sold profitably end up being stockpiled or or

destroyed, while elsewhere people have to do without without these goods

because they don’t have the means to buy them. The consequences of the

Spanish collectives’ capitalist mode of operation conformed to this

pattern; for example:

‘The warehouse owned by by the SICEP (Syndicate of the Footwear Industry

in Elda and Petrel) in Elda, Valencia, and Barcelona, as well as the

factory warehouses, were full of unsold goods, valued at some 10 million

pesestas.’

The End of the Collectives

The Spanish collectives were eventually destroyed by in-fighting among

the anti-fascists and by the fascist victory itself. One can only

speculate about how they might have developed had they survived the war.

Our guess is that their basically capitalist nature would have become

even more obvious.

In the capitalist economy market competition forces every enterprise to

try to produce its goods as cheaply as possible as to undercut its

rivals. The Spanish collectives, trading with each other and competing

with non-collectivised enterprises would inevitably have been subject to

the same pressures.

One of the ways in which capitalist enterprise try to cut costs is by

increasing the exploitation of the workforce, for example by cutting

wages or increasing the intensity of the work, or lengthening working

hours. Where this happens in a an enterprise owned and and run by a

individual boss or the state, workers can identify their enemy and fight

against their exploitation. This is far less likely to happen where the

entire workforce itself is the collective owner of and manager of the

enterprise — as was the case with the Spanish collectives. The workforce

has a vested interest in in the profitability of the capital which it

collectively owns; it identifies with and willingly organises its own

exploitation. It has to in fact to keep itself in business.

The End of Anarchism

Many present-day Anarchists — such as the Direct Action Movement, Black

Flag, and Freedom — still stand for the type of self-managed capitalism

established by the industrial and agricultural collectives during the

Spanish civil war. Because of this we oppose them as resolutely as we

oppose the supporters of any other capitalist ideology — and we urge any

of our sympathisers who think of themselves as anarchists to follow

suit.

From the point of view of working class people’s needs, self-managed

capitalism is a dead-end, just as reactionary as private or

state-capitalism. The communist society we are fighting for can only be

established by the complete destruction of ALL property, money, wages

and markets, whatever their form.

The information and quotes in this article come from The Anarchist

Collectives by Sam Dolgoff, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution by

Gaston Leval, The Spanish Revolution by Stanley Payne, and With the

Peasants of Aragon by Augustin Souchy.

At the time of the Spanish civil war the revolutionaries who published

the journals Bilan and International Council Correspondence criticised

anti-fascism and Anarchism from a similar point of view to that held by

Wildcat today. If you’re interested in reading some of the articles they

wrote, we can send copies for the price of a £1 donation to cover the

cost of photocopying and postage.

‘We ask the Catalan people to make and end to factional struggles and

intrigues ... and think of nothing but the war’

‘Let no one think about increasing wages and reducing hours of work’

‘Our militia will never defend the bourgeoise, they just do not attack

it.’

ANARCHIST LEADER DURRUTI CALLS OFF THE CLASS WAR