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Title: May Days 1937 Author: David Porter Date: 1988, Spring Language: en Topics: Spanish revolution, review, Spanish Civil War, Fifth Estate, Fifth Estate #328 Source: Fifth Estate #328, Spring, 1988, accessed September 4, 2019 at https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/328-spring-1988/may-days-1937/
a review of
The May Days, Barcelona 1937 by A. Souchy, B. Bolloten, Emma Goldman and
Jose Peirats, Freedom Press, London, 1987, 128 pages, $5.00
FE note: The tragic events of May 1937 highlighted what had always been
the dichotomy of the Spanish War. The struggle has been widely and
popularly known as the Spanish Civil War, and characterized solely as
the defense of the liberal Republican government against the fascist
forces of General Francisco Franco. The conflict was the prelude to
World War II and the reigning mythology describes it as the “good fight”
to defend democracy from the forces of barbarism, a battle which was
aided heroically by the world communist movement which sent
“international brigades” from numerous countries to assist the
struggling Spanish government.
However, occurring simultaneously, and of more significance, was the
Spanish Revolution, led by the million-member anarcho-syndicalist
CNT-FAI which, although hidden from official histories, established an
anti-statist, anti-capitalist communismo anarchismo throughout many of
the country’s fields and factories (see FE #323, Summer 1986, “Spain
’36” by David Porter).
Beginning in 1937, the Spanish central government aided by their
communist allies, attempted to wrest control of the revolutionary gains
from the anarchists through a campaign of murderous assaults on CNT
positions of which the Barcelona May Days was perhaps the most pivotal.
The communist record of anti-anarchist terror and counter-revolutionary
activity probably had more to do with the eventual defeat of the
Revolution and the Civil War than did Franco with all of his aid from
Hitler and Mussolini. However, this has been obscured by liberal and
stalinist historians who, in tandem, disguise the treacherous record of
the communists, while ignoring the far-reaching achievements of the
anarchist movement. Details of the Spanish events are far too complex to
be explained in detail at this writing, but we highly recommend the
Volume under review and, additionally, suggest Anarchists in the Spanish
Revolution by José Peirats, and Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the
Spanish Revolution, edited by David Porter as excellent sources for
information. In the review below, Porter examines the implications of
the attack on the anarchist position in Barcelona, both for the movement
of half a century ago and for ours today. We welcome your comments.
Young anarchists assassinated by the Communists in Barcelona, May 1937.
—from Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution by José Peirats (available
from our book service)
Along with Kronstadt in 1921 and the Spanish street insurgency against
the right-wing coup of July 1936, the Barcelona May Days of 1937 in the
midst of the Spanish Revolution stand out as perhaps the most poignant
event, the greatest “moment of truth” in modern anarchist history.
Within those several days and that small area was the greatest
concentration ever of armed anarchist defense against the viciousness of
authoritarian power. Yet the particularly disillusioning resolution of
the May Days foretold better than any other single event the immense
tragedy swiftly overtaking the largest anarchist movement in the world.
In short, the May Days were the final great hope as well as defeat of
the traditional anarchist movement.
Small wonder that passions run hot on the subject. For some, the May
Days of Barcelona represent a scandalous betrayal by Spanish anarchist
“leaders,” such as Federica Montseny, Juan Garcia Oliver and Mariano R.
Vasquez. All three greatly admired figures had the audacity to urge
Barcelona anarchists to lay down their arms in the face of intentionally
confrontational, bloody provocations by the anarchists’ ostensibly
antifascist “allies”—instigated particularly by the Communists. To “save
antifascist unity,” militant anarchist street fighters and anarchist
troops in Aragon ready to support the rear were told to accept a
humiliating truce—one which conceded a shift in power from the
likely-victorious anarchists in Barcelona to an increasingly Stalinist
and repressive regime. Such a disgrace was the culmination of the long
string of “realist” assessments of options and responsibilities by a
majority of anarchist “influentials” since the July 1936 outbreak of
civil war and before. To their credit, many such “leaders”as Montseny,
Diego-Abad de Santillan and others—learned their bitter lesson from May
and later publicly admitted the bankruptcy of their collaboration with
the Spanish Republican government.
The anarchists were the most influential political force in Catalonia,
and they had been raised to a fever pitch by the likely victory over the
violent provocations of the power-hungry Communists and their allies in
Barcelona. On the face of it, it seems incredible that this grassroots
movement so intensely imbued with anarchist principles, so fiery in its
commitment to social revolution and the fall of the state could have
been impelled to back down and defuse a revolutionary center on the
verge of explosion.
To explore any or all of these factors would take much greater space
than available here. Yet it should be noted that there were also
significant numbers of Spanish anarchists who opposed collaborationism
from the beginning, who foretold the trap it eventually led to in May
1937 and after. Such individuals energetically expressed strong
anarchist critiques in meetings and the press, while also contributing
to a vast array of successful collective experiments in agriculture,
industry, the service sector, education and other realms. Many such
anarchists were assassinated or imprisoned, their collectives destroyed,
their opinions ignored or ridiculed by statist political forces, again
particularly by the Communists. Yet they persisted as long as they
could, until killed or forced into harrowing exile.
In retrospect it seems more obvious to us now how dim were the overall
chances for a successful anarchist social revolution in Spain. It is
possible, as some have argued (even at the time), that a different
approach to the civil war, (using guerrilla instead of fixed battle-line
strategies) would have enhanced the possibilities of defeating the
fascists while preserving a non-collaborationist, uncorrupted anarchist
movement. A prolonged struggle of this sort perhaps could have mobilized
the areas of anarchist strength throughout Spain, could have avoided the
worst centralizing and costly strategies, organization and logistics of
traditional warfare, and could have outlasted the increasingly
preoccupied Nazi and Italian fascist support which was so crucial to
Franco’s Nationalist success.
As elsewhere in parts of Europe in 1944 through 1946, it is also
possible that a significant open space for revolutionary society could
have followed a successful defeat of the fascists while the Soviet
Union, Britain, France and the United States were preoccupied on other
fronts and in postwar reconstruction. Yet the long-range survival of
such an experiment in the face of state powers everywhere else seems
hard to imagine. Even worse, several immediate factors would have been
more decisive than foreign invasion. The majority of Spanish people were
not anarchists; even with Franco’s defeat, no doubt large numbers would
have resisted social revolution. Also, most of the anarchist movement
itself (the FAI and CNT) seemed willing—however begrudgingly—to accept
“emergency” hierarchical and centralist practices within the movement.
Thus, winning even a guerrilla war would still have required postwar
armed defense against internal and external enemies, and in turn, the
persisting crisis would have discouraged consistent commitment to
non-hierarchical principles.
It is a virtue of the new small book The May Days: Barcelona 1937,
edited by Vernon Richards and published by Freedom Press, to bring
together four complementary accounts which set forth clearly the context
and essential dynamics of the May 1937 events. Additionally, Richards’
own remarks, in a preface, brief chapter, some footnotes and an
epilogue, encourage an intelligent synthesis of the material without
precluding potential conclusions somewhat different from his own. Of the
four outside contributions, three are already available to those
familiar with anarchist history.
The entry by José Peirats (from his Anarchists in the Spanish
Revolution, 1977) describes the political context in which the May
events would unfold. Augustin Souchy’s detailed account of the events
themselves was reprinted apparently only in anarchist periodicals of the
time. Another careful account, but with richer independent
documentation, comes from Burnett Bolloten’s The Spanish Revolution: The
Left and the Struggle for Power during the Civil War (1979). Emma
Goldman’s description of the persecution of Spanish revolutionaries was
derived from her trip to Spain in late 1937 (it was reprinted recently
in my compilation of her Spanish writings, Vision on Fire, 1983). Vernon
Richards’ useful remarks, in turn, are comparable to those found in his
own valuable Lessons of the Spanish Revolution (rev. ed., 1983).
An important advantage of the four major contributions is that all are
written on the basis of direct experience in Spain at the time—Peirats,
Souchy and Goldman as anarchist militants and Bolloten as an unusually
careful, astute and sympathetic journalist for United Press
International. In compact, readable form, the book thus gives voice to
authentic observers with perspectives then and now largely ignored by
the dominant conservative, liberal and state-socialist press.
If the course of the huge, 1930’s Spanish movement was doomed from the
start, in the face of all the factors discussed above, how can today’s
comrades find a sense of direction in such a tradition? What can we
learn from this book and from the Spanish experience in general?
If the old contexts and practices of street barricades no longer seem
serious or viable possibilities in much of the world, the lessons of the
slippery road of collaborationism seem eternal. How many of us are
tempted, for all the pragmatic reasons of crisis or simple expedience,
“temporarily” to ally ourselves with cultural or political forces or
principles whose suppositions and end-goals obviously contradict our
own? However more subtle and unspectacular the dynamics, can we truly
see a different pattern at work than that which revealed itself so
dramatically in Spain?
The events of May 1937 were the culmination of a process in which
numerous anarchist “influentials” became unconsciously addicted (some
temporarily, some permanently) to the temptations of hierarchical power.
Once accepting such a condition, the only way an anarchist can then
preserve a sense of personal ideals is to work toward some piece of
“lesser-of-evils” reform. But the eventual reform never occurs without
yet greater compromise. The downward spiral most often continues until
the anarchist becomes identical to hierarchical social reformers.
Demoralization, cynicism and apathy naturally follow. In all of this,
the power addict may “mean well,” but be totally fooled as to the real
outcome—especially when actively flattered by others far more skilled in
the realities of such a world. When others threaten to withdraw the
power fix (thus threatening “the coalition,” “respectability,”
“acceptance” by authorities, or simply one’s sense of escape), deeper
and deeper complicity are the only response. Eventually, even the
anarchist pretense is lost.
At least the beginnings of this dynamic played a significant role in the
events of May 1937. Eventually, it led some “influentials “not awakened
by the May outcome to tolerate even the imprisonment of anarchist
militants and conscription for the front by the CNT late in the war. To
comprehend this pattern is reason enough to read and re-read the tragic
accounts in this book.
Despite the crisis atmosphere which encouraged compromise and
collaboration, there persisted the revolutionary energy, the commitment
to an ideal, and the fierce determination to struggle for freedom amidst
hellish alternatives. Such passionate energies typified the thousands of
anarchists who fought the fascists, who defiantly stood up against the
Communists and other statists in the first days of May 1937 (as well as
before and after), and who struggled on in their daily collective
experiments. There was a level of energy, commitment and generous
solidarity in the Spanish context which defies our own experience and
serves as a model for whatever we are part of in the future. Balancing
the tragedy and the greatness together, from an anarchist perspective,
at least one important lesson from Spain is that there is never
“victory” as such. The best we may hope for is a commendable and fully
human attempt to make every present context as qualitatively free as we
can.