A new world in our hearts
“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 bourgeois may blast and ruin it’s own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.”
Buenaventura Durruti, anarchist militant 1937
2006 sees the70th anniversary of one of the most important episodes of European working class history – the Spanish Revolution.
Because the Spanish anarchist movement was historically such a large and important one, anarchists have had a reputation for idealising the Spanish events of 1936 – 1937 and the role of libertarians in it. Unlike, for example, Britain or Ireland, anarchist ideas had been at the forefront of socialist politics in Spain since the 1860s. The libertarian movement had deep roots amongst both the peasantry and the emergent industrial working class for more than half a century prior to the 1936 revolution.
CNT - FAI
Most of that movement could be found in the revolutionary syndicalist National Labour Confederation (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo - CNT), a union which in May 1936 numbered over half a million. By no means all CNT members were anarchists, many had joined for the simple reason that the union was the strongest and most effective in their workplace. But the organisation was at least nominally committed to a libertarian communist future and was regarded as a de facto anarchist union. Partly in order to maintain the CNT’s libertarian and revolutionary perspectives, anarchist militants had in 1927 created the Iberian Anarchist Federation (Federación Anarquista Iberica - FAI). This latter organisation had a structure based upon affinity groups and in 1936 claimed something in the region of 30,000 militants.
It is easy to see how the libertarian movement was a major player in Spanish political life, vastly outnumbering the Communist Party and challenging the social democratic party, the Workers’ Socialist Party and their industrial wing, the General Workers Union (Unión General de Trabajadores- UGT), for the allegiance of the urban and rural working class. It was, therefore, inevitable that the anarchists would play a major role in the social upheaval sparked by an attempted military – clerical – fascist coup in July 1936.
July 1936
The July revolt by a large section of the Spanish army, led by General Franco and supported by the Catholic Church and the fascist Falange party, might be described as a pre-emptive counter-revolution. A ‘Popular Front’ government had been elected in February, bringing to power a coalition dominated by the Left Republicans, a middle class democratic party with a programme of modernisation and moderate reform. Despite their involvement in this front, the Socialists would not take part. Even so, this was enough to prompt the reactionary forces of the traditional ruling elite to immediately prepare for civil war. On July 17th what became known as the Nationalist revolt kicked off in Spanish Morocco, quickly spreading into Spain itself. As town after town fell to the militarists the Republican government vacillated, talked of coming to an agreement with the rebel military and generally appeared paralysed in the face of the revolt. As the initiative for resisting the Nationalists was falling to the workers’ organisations, particularly the CNT and UGT, the government slowly authorised the arming of the union militias. In the capital, Madrid, the revolt was rapidly disarmed by armed UGT militants alongside those security forces who remained ‘loyal’ to the government. In Barcelona the CNT took effective control.
Though large parts of Spain were in the hands of the Nationalists, their overall advance was temporarily halted and the large cities of Barcelona and Madrid were in the hands of the unions. In Barcelona the CNT and FAI emptied the barracks and distributed arms to groups of members across Catalonia and beyond. So, in the midst of civil war and chaos, began the Spanish Revolution.
In Catalonia and Aragon, the two regions with the greatest concentration of libertarian workers and peasants, there began a social transformation. Real power was being taken into the hands of the working class as the government looked on, temporarily powerless. The distribution of food, the maintenance of public services, the opening of collective restaurants and the organisation of defence against the Nationalist forces were all being undertaken by strictly unofficial elements! Human creativity was being unleashed and the state was nowhere to be seen, though undoubtedly it was there, waiting to regain strength.
Collectivisations of industry and the expropriation of the land, initiated by CNT and, to a lesser extent, UGT members, were taking place throughout these areas. Often, anarchist militias such as the famous Durruti Column, would actively promote and defend collectivisations as they travelled to the frontline. The collectivisation of land has been described as “Probably the most creative legacy of Spanish anarchism” by the writer and historian Daniel Guerin. As large landowners abandoned their estates their workers took over and ran them collectively. Where landowners stayed, those who had appeared sympathetic to the militarist revolt were kicked off the land whilst ‘good republican’ landowners were often invited to join the collectives! In total it is estimated that possibly 3 million people were involved in collectives in the ‘revolutionary period ‘of 1936-37.
The collectives variously attempted to put into practice libertarian communism based on the principle of ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’ but, more commonly, collectivism where a ‘family wage’ was paid by the
collective.
The social revolution
Socially, the revolution began to cast-off centuries of mental servitude to the ruling class and the Catholic church. Working people began to discard formal and deferential speech, common in Spanish. People spoke to each other as equals. Churches found themselves under attack, often being requisitioned for practical use and sometimes simply burnt down as symbols of centuries-old oppression.
New groups involving themselves in artistic, musical and cultural activities emerged in a surge of creativity unleashed by the possibilities the revolution offered.
The Industrial Collectivisations
In the industrial areas of ‘Loyalist Spain’, particularly Catalonia, large parts of manufacturing and most public services were immediately taken over and managed by the workers. The collectivised factories and workshops were, for four months after the July events, run without state involvement. The revolution in Russia in 1917 had faced the problem of the desertion of skilled technicians to the counter-revolution, and although this was not as widespread in Spain, where many technical staff were themselves active syndicalists, it was still a factor. Unlike the agricultural experiments in self-management, the industrial efforts were faced with having to reorganise the factories to produce armaments and military vehicles. Added to this was the successful attempt by the state to co-opt the collectivisations.
In October the Catalan regional government ratified the socialisation of industry. The state was attempting to both control the collectivisation process and to use it to its own advantage in building the war effort and disciplining the workforce. The state decreed that all factories employing more than 100 workers were to be brought under the joint management of a Council of Enterprises. This Council was to include both the workforce and a representative from the Catalan regional government who would act as ‘controller’. The Collectivisation Decree of October 1936, however, transferred all real power to the state’s General Council for Industry. Although the workers who had taken control through direct action in 1936 remained nominally in control, their role was in reality only to be consulted and, naturally, to work.
How did this happen? In July 1936 the state was impotent and almost invisible, yet a few months later it had returned and had usurped power from the working class.
The CNT-FAI betrayal
The reason can be found in the fact that whilst the rank and file of the libertarian organisations were engaging in collectivisations and land seizures, the ‘leadership’ of the movement saved the government from complete eclipse.
And it began this process as early as the 20th July, the day following the halting of the militarist rising. On that fateful day Luis Companys the President of the Generalitat, the regional government of Catalonia, summoned representatives of the CNT and the FAI. Companys offered to resign from a government which existed in name only, its ability to ‘restore order’ non-existent. At this meeting the CNT and FAI, representing the armed and mobilised masses, decided that a new administration could be established between the revolutionary workers movement and the leftist forces of the Popular Front. The new structure was the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias and it was this organisation which oversaw the social re-organisation in the weeks following the effective collapse. It was this committee which helped co-ordinate the establishing and supplying of militias to fight at the front, the collectivisations and the maintenance of social services. But the vital breathing space gave the government the opportunity to recover and re-establish its power. As the dissident anarcho-syndicalist group ‘Friends of Durruti’ were to reflect later
There can be absolutely no common ground between exploiters and exploited. Which shall prevail, only battle can decide. Bourgeoisie or workers. Certainly not both of them at once (Towards a Fresh Revolution 1938).
So, with power in the hands of the working class, why did the leadership of the CNT-FAI not simply dismiss the government and maintain workers power? The betrayal cannot be blamed upon reformist or moderate elements in the CNT, after all, the militant FAI was also there. Indeed, the FAI’s Garcia Oliver, present at the meeting, stated that the choice was between
“ Libertarian Communism, which means the anarchist dictatorship, or democracy, which means collaboration.” (quoted in Lessons of the Spanish Revolution, Vernon Richards 1953).
This false dichotomy ignored the possibility of maintaining and extending the gains of the working class without an ‘anarchist dictatorship’ but through the suppression of the republican democratic bourgeoisie, which was already in disarray.
The ‘anarchist’ politicians
The choice of collaboration sealed the fate of the revolution. Dual power could not last very long. On September 27th representatives of the CNT entered the new Council of the Generalitat, the reorganised regional government of Catalonia and the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias, in which the CNT had placed so much hope, was gone. The decision to enter the government appears to have been taken a week earlier by the National Committee of the CNT, which was supposed to be answerable to the union as a whole. The CNT had called for a Regional Defence Council which would co-ordinate without being a government per se, but when offered places in a coalition with bourgeois parties they did not hesitate to cross the class divide. The ‘hard-line’ FAI militant Garcia Oliver was to say “The Committees of the Anti-Fascist Militias have been dissolved because now the Generalitat represents all of us.” This amazing statement shows how quickly both anarchist principles and class analysis were thrown away. The stage was set for the ‘anarchist’ politicians to enter the National Government of Spain, led by left socialist Largo Caballero, two months later in November 1936.
The rise of the Communist Party
The growth of the Communist Party throughout what became the Spanish Civil War was phenomenal. Two main factors promoted that growth. Firstly, the Spanish Republic looked to the Soviet Union for material aid and support and secondly, the Spanish Stalinists opposed any revolutionary activity which might jeopardise the bourgeois republic and thereby recruited heavily from all those who might be inconvenienced by collectivisations. The Communist Party, adept at infiltration and manipulation, took control of the Socialist Party’s youth section and, through the importation of Russian military advisors and their own political commissars, rapidly gained an influence in the military of the Republic out of all proportion to their size. In 1936 the party united with the Catalan socialists to form the Catalan United Socialist Party (PSUC), which it dominated.
The Communist Party was the main sponsor of the famous International Brigades, the tens of thousands of volunteers who came from across the globe to ‘defend the republic’. This added to the Party’s kudos.
Militarization
The communists were also at the forefront of the campaign to integrate the militias of the CNT-FAI and the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), a large anti-Stalinist left socialist grouping, into the ‘Popular Army’ of the Republic.
Opposition to militarization of the militias came mainly from the grassroots of the CNT-FAI and, naturally, from the anarchist militias which had emerged in July – September 1936 during the existence of the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias. The militias were not opposed to co-ordination of the physical fight against the nationalist military, but of being forced into a traditional army which would be controlled by whoever was in charge of the state.
However, the military situation in the period following the entry of the ‘anarchists’ into the regional and central governments was dire for the Republican forces. The government left Madrid for Valencia as the capital was besieged in November and the pressure increased for the dissolving of the militias into a regular army. The increasing militarization of the Republican area was another sign that the revolution was being strangled and that the working class was becoming used in a conventional war between two rival factions of the ruling class.
The May Events, 1937
The last gasp of the Spanish revolution came in May 1937. Throughout April the Generalitat, complete with 4 ‘anarchist’ ministers, including the Minister for Justice, had been escalating harassment of ‘uncontrollable elements’ in the CNT and the POUM, disarming workers patrol groups, raiding offices. On the morning of May 3rd a provocation occurred that would signal the final defeat of the Revolution and the capitulation of the CNT to the state.
The Barcelona Telephone Exchange had been under the control of its workers, mainly CNT members, since the July days. At 3 o’clock on the afternoon of Monday May 3rd the police attempted to occupy the building but could not advance beyond the first floor due to resistance from the workers. News of the assault spread and rank and file CNT, FAI and POUM militants responded, arming themselves and organising to resist. The leadership of the CNT called for calm and the removal of the police from the building. But events were overtaking the leaders and a general strike developed in Barcelona as barricades were erected by the working class across the city. Shooting started in the early hours of the next day and continued sporadically. Still the CNT called for negotiations to end the stand-off. Exactly 24 hours after the occupation of the telephone exchange the CNT-FAI called for the workers organisations to unilaterally lay down their arms in a radio broadcast. “Workers of the CNT! Workers of the UGT! Don’t be deceived by these manoeuvres. Above all else, Unity! Put down your arms. Only one slogan: We must work to beat fascism! Down with fascism!”
But the counter-revolution, spearheaded by the PSUC and the local Catalan Nationalists, was determined to humble the anarchists. Libertarians were shot in cold blood only yards from the headquarters of the CNT. On the 5th the state escalated the provocation by an assault on the local Libertarian Youth centre and the surrounding of CNT headquarters. On the same night the Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri and his comrade Barbieri were abducted and murdered by a joint police and PSUC squad. Berneri, editor of ‘Guerra di Classe” (Class War) was one of the most intelligent and constructive critics of the anarchist collaboration.
Again capitulation
At this time The Friends of Durruti group issued a proclamation calling for a ‘Revolutionary Junta’ (Council) to be established, which would include the POUM. The POUM, however, remained indecisive and awaited the leadership of the CNT-FAI. The leadership could only counsel ‘serenity’ and calm, calling for a return to work and a ceasefire whilst the Catalan government called in reinforcements from around Republican Spain!
Despite the encouragement not to abandon the streets which came from the Friends of Durruti, the rank and file of the CNT, FAI and Libertarian Youth complied with the leadership. The majority of syndicalists and anarchists continued to trust those who had been their most ardent militants in the years before. By Friday 7th, the fighting in Barcelona had ended. The Catalan and national governments, however, took this as a sign that the CNT would now accept almost anything in the name of anti-fascist unity and despite agreements to the contrary, occupied the entirety of the telephone exchange and continued to harass, intimidate and arrest anarchists.
Aftermath
The aftermath of the May Days saw the power and confidence of the state reinforced and the morale of the revolutionaries sapped. In June the state outlawed the POUM, which subsequently disappeared from the scene, mainly into Stalinist prisons. In July the anarchists were excluded from the reorganised Catalan government and from August onwards the state carried on a programme of de-collectivisation. The revolution, in the sense of working class power and of a libertarian reorganisation of society, was dead. The revolution dead, the defeat of the Republic followed as the nationalists, supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, crushed the ‘Peoples Army’.
An impossible revolution?
The Spanish Revolution of 1936 was born in the midst of a period of darkest reaction. Italy and Germany were under the jackboot of fascism, their working class subdued by repression. The Soviet Union, at the height of Stalin’s dictatorship over the proletariat, dominated the left through the Communist International. Stalinism internationally served to defend the Soviet Union and the policy of the Communist Parties twisted and turned depending on the needs of the ‘Workers’ Fatherland’. It is no exaggeration to say that the working class was in a position of international defeat.
When the workers of Spain spontaneously moved to crush the nationalist – militarist uprising they were alone, isolated and far from being part of an international movement. What they had in their favour were mass organisations, built over many years and having come through repression and illegality.
From the very beginning the anarchist and syndicalist movement’s ‘official’ leadership acted like politicians and played the political games of the bourgeoisie. Paralysed by the fear of establishing an ‘anarchist dictatorship’ they instead effectively accepted the dictatorship of the democratic, anti-fascist ruling class. And whilst the rank and file of the anarchist movement strove to proceed towards libertarian communism, they failed to challenge their own organisation’s integration into the historical enemy of classical anarchism – the state. The Friends of Durruti put it clearly when they said that “Democracy, not fascism, defeated the Spanish people”.
An incredible creativity and capacity for creating a new world was exhibited, in the worst possible conditions, by millions of Spanish workers and peasants. This, tragically, was not enough to actually make the new world, held deeply in their hearts, realised.