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I.8 Does revolutionary Spain show that libertarian socialism can work in practice?
</title>

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<h1>I.8 Does revolutionary Spain show that libertarian socialism can work in practice?</h1>

<p>
Yes. Revolutionary Spain <i>"shows you what human beings are like when 
they are trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist
machine."</i> [George Orwell, <b>Orwell in Spain</b>, p. 254] At the
heart of the transformation were the CNT (the National Confederation of
Labour, an anarcho-syndicalist union) and the FAI (Iberian Anarchist 
Federation). As Murray Bookchin put it:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In Spain, millions of people took large segments of the 
economy into their own hands, collectivised them, administered 
them, even abolished money and lived by communistic principles 
of work and distribution -- all of this in the midst of a terrible 
civil war, yet without producing the chaos or even the serious
dislocations that were and still are predicted by authoritarian
'radicals.' Indeed, in many collectivised areas, the efficiency 
with which an enterprise worked by far exceeded that of a 
comparable one in nationalised or private sectors. This 'green 
shoot' of revolutionary reality has more meaning for us than 
the most persuasive theoretical arguments to the contrary. On 
this score it is not the anarchists who are the 'unrealistic 
day-dreamers,' but their opponents who have turned their backs 
to the facts or have shamelessly concealed them."</i> 
[<i>"Introductory Essay,"</i> <b>The Anarchist Collectives</b>, 
Sam Dolgoff (ed.), p. xxxix] </blockquote>
</p><p>
Anarchist and CNT activist Gaston Leval comments that in those 
areas which defeated the fascist uprising on the 19th of July 
1936 a profound social revolution took place based, mostly, on 
anarchist ideas:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In Spain, during almost three years, despite a civil war that took
a million lives, despite the opposition of the political parties . . . 
this idea of libertarian communism was put into effect. Very quickly
more than 60% of the land was collectively cultivated by the 
peasants themselves, without landlords, without bosses, and without 
instituting capitalist competition to spur production. In almost all the 
industries, factories, mills, workshops, transportation services, public 
services, and utilities, the rank and file workers, their revolutionary 
committees, and their syndicates reorganised and administered production, 
distribution, and public services without capitalists, high-salaried 
managers, or the authority of the state.</i>
</blockquote></p>
<p><blockquote>
<i>"Even more: the various agrarian and industrial collectives immediately
instituted economic equality in accordance with the essential principle 
of communism, 'From each according to his ability and to each according 
to his needs.' They co-ordinated their efforts through free association 
in whole regions, created new wealth, increased production (especially 
in agriculture), built more schools, and bettered public services. They
instituted not bourgeois formal democracy but genuine grass roots
functional libertarian democracy, where each individual participated
directly in the revolutionary reorganisation of social life. They
replaced the war between men, 'survival of the fittest,' by the 
universal practice of mutual aid, and replaced rivalry by the principle 
of solidarity . . .</i>
</blockquote></p>
<p><blockquote>
<i>"This experience, in which about eight million people directly or
indirectly participated, opened a new way of life to those who 
sought an alternative to anti-social capitalism on the one hand, 
and totalitarian state bogus socialism on the other."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 6-7]
</blockquote></p><p>
Thus about eight million people directly or indirectly participated in 
the libertarian based new economy during the short time it was able to 
survive the military assaults of the fascists and the attacks and sabotage 
of the Communists and Republican state. This in itself suggests that 
libertarian socialist ideas are of a practical nature. 
</p><p>
Lest the reader think that Leval and Bookchin are exaggerating the
accomplishments and ignoring the failures of the Spanish collectives, 
in the following subsections we will present specific details and answer 
some objections often raised by misinformed critics. We will try to present 
an objective analysis of the revolution, its many successes, its strong 
and weak points, the mistakes made and possible lessons to be 
drawn from the experience, both from the successes and the failures. 
However, this will hardly do justice to the collectivisation as it 
<i>"assumed an infinite diversity of forms from village to village,
and even in the different firms collectivised in the cities . . . 
there was an element of improvisation and of the exceptional wartime
conditions experienced by the country (i.e., the war against fascism)
and the arrangements had their flaws as well as their good points."</i>
[Jose Peirats, <b>The CNT in the Spanish Revolution</b>, vol. 1, p. 223]
</p><p>
This libertarian influenced revolution has (generally) been ignored 
by historians, or its existence mentioned in passing. Some so-called 
historians and "objective investigators" have slandered it and lied 
about (when not ignoring) the role anarchists played in it. Communist 
histories are particularly unreliable (to use a polite word for their 
activities) but it seems that almost <b>every</b> political perspective 
has done this (including liberal, so-called right-wing "libertarian", 
Stalinist, Trotskyist, Marxist, and so on). So any attempt to 
investigate what actually occurred in Spain and the anarchists' 
role in it is subject to a great deal of difficulty. Moreover, 
the positive role that Anarchists played in the revolution and the 
positive results of our ideas when applied in practice are also 
downplayed, if not ignored. Indeed, the misrepresentations of 
the Spanish Anarchist movement are downright amazing (see Jerome R. 
Mintz's wonderful book <b>The Anarchists of Casa Viejas</b> and J. 
Romero Maura's article <i>"The Spanish case"</i> [<b>Anarchism Today</b>, 
J. Joll and D. Apter (eds.)] for a refutation of many of the standard 
assertions and distortions about the Spanish anarchist movement by 
historians). The myths generated by Marxists of various shades are, 
perhaps needless to say, the most extensive (see the appendix on 
<a href="append32.html"><i>"Marxists and Spanish Anarchism"</i></a> 
for a reply to some of the more common ones). 
</p><p>
All we can do here is present a summary of the social revolution 
that took place and attempt to explode a few of the myths that 
have been created around the work of the CNT and FAI during 
those years. We must stress that this can be nothing but a short 
introduction to the Spanish Revolution. We concentrate on the 
economic and political aspects of the revolution as we cannot 
cover everything. However, we must mention the social transformations 
that occurred all across non-fascist Spain. The revolution saw the
traditional social relationships between men and women, adults and 
children, individual and individual transformed, revolutionised
in a libertarian way. CNT militant Abel Paz gave a good idea of what 
happened:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Industry is in the hands of the workers and all the production
centres conspicuously fly the red and black flags as well as
inscriptions announcing that they have really become collectives.
The revolution seems to be universal. Changes are also evident
in social relations. The former barriers which used to separate
men and woman arbitrarily have been destroyed. In the cafes and
other public places there is a mingling of the sexes which would
have been completely unimaginable before. The revolution has
introduced a fraternal character to social relations which has
deepened with practice and show clearly that the old world is
dead."</i> [<b>Durruti: The People Armed</b>, p. 243]
</blockquote></p><p>
The social transformation empowered individuals and these, in
turn, transformed society. Anarchist militant Enriqueta Rovira
presents a vivid picture of the self-liberation the revolution
generated:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"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 <b>our</b> control, of under anyone's. Of 
<b>possibility</b>. We <b>had</b> everything. We had Barcelona: 
It was ours. You'd walk out in the streets, and they were ours
-- here, CNT; there, <b>comite</b> this or that. It was totally
different. Full of possibility. A feeling that we could, together, 
really <b>do</b> something. That we could make things different."</i> 
[quoted by Martha A. Ackelsberg and Myrna Margulies Breithart, 
<i>"Terrains of Protest: Striking City Women"</i>, pp. 151-176, 
<b>Our Generation</b>, vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 164-5]
</blockquote></p><p>
Moreover, the transformation of society that occurred during the
revolution extended to all areas of life and work. For example,
the revolution saw <i>"the creation of a health workers' union,
a true experiment in socialised medicine. They provided medical
assistance and opened hospitals and clinics."</i> [Juan Gomez Casas,
<b>Anarchist Organisation: The History of the FAI</b>, p. 192] We
discuss this example in some detail in 
<a href="secI5.html#seci512">section I.5.12</a> and so
will not do so here. We simply stress that this section
of the FAQ is just an introduction to what happened and does
not (indeed, cannot) discuss all aspects of the revolution.
We just present an overview, bringing out the libertarian
aspects of the revolution, the ways workers' self-management
was organised, how the collectives organised and what they did.
</p><p>
Needless to say, many mistakes were made during the revolution.
We point out and discuss some of them in what follows. Moreover,
much of what happened did not correspond exactly with what many 
people consider as the essential steps in a communist (libertarian 
or otherwise) revolution. Nor, it must be stressed, did much of it
reflect the pre-revolution stated aims of the CNT itself. Economically, 
for example, the collectives themselves were an unexpected development,
one which was based on libertarian principles but also reflected the
reality of the situation the CNT militants found themselves in. Much
the same can be said of the fact that few collectives reached beyond 
mutualism or collectivism in spite of the CNT seeking a libertarian 
communist economy. Politically, the fear of a fascist victory 
made many anarchists accept collaboration with the state as a 
lesser evil. However, to dismiss the Spanish Revolution because it 
did not meet the ideals laid out by a handful of revolutionaries 
beforehand would be sectarian and elitist nonsense. No working class 
revolution is pure, no mass struggle is without its contradictions, 
no attempt to change society is perfect. <i>"It is only those 
who do nothing who make no mistakes,"</i> as Kropotkin so correctly
pointed out. [<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 143] The question is whether the 
revolution creates a system of institutions which will allow those 
involved to discuss the problems they face, change the decisions 
reached and correct any mistakes they make. In this, the Spanish 
Revolution clearly succeeded, creating organisations based on the 
initiative, autonomy and power of working class people. 
</p><p>
For more information about the social revolution, Sam Dolgoff's anthology
<b>The Anarchist Collectives</b> is an excellent starting place. Gaston 
Leval's <b>Collectives in the Spanish Revolution</b> is another essential 
text. Jose Peirats' <b>Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution</b> and his 
three volume quasi-official history <b>The CNT in the Spanish Revolution</b> 
are key works. Vernon Richards' <b>Lessons of the Spanish Revolution</b> 
is an excellent critical anarchist work on the revolution and the 
role of the anarchists. <b>Spain 1936-1939: Social Revolution and 
Counter-Revolution</b> (edited by Vernon Richards) is a useful 
collection of articles from the time. Abel Paz's <b>Durruti in the 
Spanish Revolution</b> is a classic biography of Spanish anarchism's 
most famous militant (this is an expanded version of his earlier <b>Durruti: 
The People Armed</b>). Emma Goldman's opinions on the Spanish Revolution 
are collected in <b>Vision on Fire</b>.
</p><p>
Robert Alexander's <b>The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War</b> is a 
good general overview of the anarchist's role in the revolution 
and civil war, as is Burnett Bolloten's <b>The Spanish Civil War</b>. 
Daniel Gurin's anthology <b>No Gods, No Masters</b> as two sections
on the Spanish Revolution, one specifically on the collectives. Noam 
Chomsky's excellent essay <i>"Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship"</i> 
indicates how liberal books on the Spanish Civil War can be misleading, 
unfair and essentially ideological in nature (this classic essay can be 
found in <b>Chomsky on Anarchism</b>, <b>The Chomsky Reader</b>, and <b>American
Power and the New Mandarins</b>). George Orwell's <b>Homage to Catalonia</b>
cannot be bettered as an introduction to the subject (Orwell was in the 
POUM militia at the Aragn Front and was in Barcelona during the May Days 
of 1937). This classic account is contained along with other works by Orwell 
about the conflict in the anthology <b>Orwell in Spain</b>. Murray 
Bookchin's <b>The Spanish Anarchists</b> is a useful history, but 
ends just as the revolution breaks out and so needs to be completed by 
his <b>To Remember Spain</b> and the essay <i>"Looking Back at Spain"</i>.
Stuart Christie's <b>We, The Anarchists!</b> is an important history on 
the Iberian Anarchist Federation.
</p>

<a name="seci81"><h2>I.8.1 Is the Spanish Revolution inapplicable as a model for modern societies?</h2></a>

<p>
Quite the reverse. More urban workers took part in the revolution
than in the countryside. So while it is true that collectivisation 
was extensive in rural areas, the revolution also made its mark in 
urban areas and in industry. 
</p><p>
In total, the <i>"regions most affected"</i> by collectivisation
<i>"were Catalonia and Aragn, where about 70 per cent of the
workforce was involved. The total for the whole of Republican
territory was nearly 800,000 on the land and a little more than 
a million in industry. In Barcelona workers' committees took over 
all the services, the oil monopoly, the shipping companies, heavy 
engineering firms such as Volcano, the Ford motor company, chemical 
companies, the textile industry and a host of smaller enterprises 
. . . Services such as water, gas and electricity were working under
new management within hours of the storming of the Atarazanas barracks 
. . . a conversion of appropriate factories to war production meant 
that metallurgical concerns had started to produce armed cars by 22 
July . . . The industrial workers of Catalonia were the most skilled 
in Spain . . . One of the most impressive feats of those early days 
was the resurrection of the public transport system at a time when 
the streets were still littered and barricaded."</i> Five days after
the fighting had stopped, 700 tramcars rather than the usual 600, all 
painted in the black-and-red colours of the CNT-FAI, were operating 
in Barcelona. [Antony Beevor, <b>The Spanish Civil War</b>, pp. 91-2]
</p><p>
About 75% of Spanish industry was concentrated in Catalonia, 
the stronghold of the anarchist labour movement, and widespread 
collectivisation of factories took place there. As Sam Dolgoff 
rightly observed, this <i>"refutes decisively the allegation that 
anarchist organisational principles are not applicable to industrial 
areas, and if at all, only in primitive agrarian societies or in 
isolated experimental communities."</i> [<b>The Anarchist Collectives</b>, 
pp. 7-8] According to Augustin Souchy: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"It is no simple matter to collectivise and place on firm foundations 
an industry employing almost a quarter of a million textile workers in 
scores of factories scattered in numerous cities. But the Barcelona 
syndicalist textile union accomplished this feat in a short time. It 
was a tremendously significant experiment. The dictatorship of the 
bosses was toppled, and wages, working conditions and production were 
determined by the workers and their elected delegates. All functionaries 
had to carry out the instructions of the membership and report back 
directly to the men on the job and union meetings. The collectivisation 
of the textile industry shatters once and for all the legend that the 
workers are incapable of administrating a great and complex corporation."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 94]</blockquote>
</p><p>
Moreover, Spain in the 1930s was <b>not</b> a backward, peasant country,
as is sometimes supposed. Between 1910 and 1930, the industrial
working class more than doubled to over 2,500,000. This represented
just over 26% of the working population (compared to 16% twenty
years previously). In 1930, only 45% of the working population
were engaged in agriculture. [Ronald Fraser, <b>The Blood of Spain</b>,
p. 38] In Catalonia alone, 200,000 workers were employed in the 
textile industry and 70,000 in metal-working and machinery 
manufacturing. This was very different than the situation in 
Russia at the end of World War I, where the urban working class 
made up only 10% of the population.
</p><p>
Capitalist social relations had also penetrated the rural economy 
by the 1930s with agriculture oriented to the world market and 
approximately 90% of farm land in the hands of the bourgeoisie. 
[Fraser, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 37] So by 1936 agriculture was 
predominately capitalist, with Spanish agribusiness employing 
large numbers of labourers who either did not own enough land 
to support themselves or where landless. The labour movement 
in the Spanish countryside in the 1930s was precisely based 
on this large population of rural wage-earners (the socialist 
UGT land workers union had 451,000 members in 1933, 40% of 
its total membership, for example). In Russia at the time of the
revolution of 1917, agriculture mostly consisted of small farms 
on which peasant families worked mainly for their own subsistence, 
bartering or selling their surplus.
</p><p>
Therefore the Spanish Revolution cannot be dismissed as a product 
a of pre-industrial society. The urban collectivisations occurred 
predominately in the most heavily industrialised part of Spain 
and indicate that anarchist ideas are applicable to modern societies 
Indeed, comforting Marxist myths aside, the CNT organised most of 
the unionised urban working class and, internally, agricultural 
workers were a minority of its membership (by 1936, the CNT was 
making inroads in Madrid, previously a socialist stronghold while
the UGT main area of growth in the 1930s was with, ironically, 
rural workers). The revolution in Spain was the work (mostly) 
of rural and urban wage labourers (joined with poor peasants) 
fighting a well developed capitalist system. 
</p><p>
In summary, then, the anarchist revolution in Spain has many lessons
for revolutionaries in developed capitalist countries and cannot
be dismissed as a product of industrial backwardness. The main 
strength lay of the anarchist movement was in urban areas and,
unsurprisingly, the social revolution took place in both the most
heavily industrialised areas as well as on the land.
</p>

<a name="seci82"><h2>I.8.2 How were the anarchists able to obtain mass 
popular support in Spain?</h2></a>

<p>
Revolutionary anarchism was introduced in Spain in 1868 by Giuseppi 
Fanelli, an associate of Michael Bakunin, and found fertile soil 
among both the workers and the peasants. Those historians who gleefully 
note that Bakunin sent someone who did not speak Spanish to spread 
his message in Spain forget how close the Latin languages are to each 
other. Fanelli was more than able to be understood by his Spanish and 
Catalan speaking hosts who, it should be noted, were already familiar 
with Proudhon's ideas.
</p><p>
The key reason why Bakunin's ideas gained such ready support
in Spain was that they reflected ideas that they had already developed
themselves. The peasants supported anarchism because of the rural 
tradition of Iberian collectivism which had existed for generations.
The urban workers supported it because its ideas of direct action, 
solidarity and free federation of unions corresponded to their needs 
in their struggle against capitalism and the state. Neither needed
to be told that capitalism was oppressive and exploitative or that the
state existed to defend this class system. In addition, many Spanish 
workers were well aware of the dangers of centralisation and the republican 
tradition in Spain was very much influenced by federalist ideas (coming, 
in part, from Proudhon's work as popularised by Pi y Margall, soon to
become the President of the first Republic). The movement spread 
back and forth between countryside and cities as urban based union 
organisers and anarchist militants visited villages and peasants 
and landless agricultural workers came to industrial cities, like 
Barcelona, looking for work.
</p><p>
Therefore, from the start anarchism in Spain was associated with the
labour movement (as Bakunin desired) and so anarchists had a practical 
area to apply their ideas and spread the anarchist message. By applying 
their principles in everyday life, the anarchists in Spain ensured that
anarchist ideas became commonplace and accepted in a large section of
the population. 
</p><p>
This acceptance of anarchism cannot be separated from the structure 
and tactics of the CNT and its fore-runners. The practice of direct 
action and solidarity encouraged workers to rely on themselves, to 
identify and solve their own problems. The decentralised structure 
of the anarchist unions had an educational effect of their members. 
By discussing issues, struggles, tactics, ideals and politics in 
their union assemblies, the members of the union educated themselves
and, by the process of self-management in the struggle, prepared 
themselves for a free society. The very organisational structure of
the CNT ensured the dominance of anarchist ideas and the political
evolution of the union membership. As one CNT militant from Casas
Viejas put it, new members <i>"asked for too much, because they lacked
education. They thought they could reach the sky without a ladder . . .
they were beginning to learn . . . There was good faith but lack
of education. For that reason we would submit ideas to the assembly,
and the bad ideas would be thrown out."</i> [quoted by Jerome R. 
Mintz, <b>The Anarchists of Casas Viejas</b>, p. 27]
</p><p>
It was by working in the union meetings that anarchists influenced
their fellow workers. The idea that the anarchists, through the
FAI, controlled the CNT is a myth. Not all anarchists in the 
CNT were members of the FAI, for example. Almost all FAI 
members were also rank-and-file members of the CNT who took part 
in union meetings as equals. Anarchists were not members of the FAI
indicate this. Jose Borras Casacarosa confirmed that <i>"[o]ne has 
to recognise that the FAI did not intervene in the CNT from
above or in an authoritarian manner as did other political 
parties in the unions. It did so from the base through militants
. . . the decisions which determined the course taken by the
CNT were taken under constant pressure from these militants."</i> 
Jose Campos noted that FAI militants <i>"tended to reject control
of confederal committees and only accepted them on specific
occasions . . . if someone proposed a motion in assembly, the
other FAI members would support it, usually successfully.
It was the individual standing of the <b>faista</b> in open 
assembly."</i> [quoted by Stuart Christie, <b>We, the Anarchists</b>, 
p. 62]
</p><p>
This explains the success of anarchism in the CNT. Anarchist 
ideas, principles and tactics, submitted to the union assemblies, 
proved to be good ideas and were not thrown out. The structure of 
the organisation, in other words, decisively influenced the <b>content</b> 
of the decisions reached as ideas, tactics, union policy and so
on were discussed by the membership and those which best applied 
to the members' lives were accepted and implemented. The CNT
assemblies showed the validity of Bakunin's arguments for
self-managed unions as a means of ensuring workers' control of
their own destinies and organisations. As he put it, the union
<i>"sections could defend their rights and their autonomy [against
union bureaucracy] in only one way: the workers called general
membership meetings . . . In these great meetings of the sections,
the items on the agenda were amply discussed and the most progressive
opinion prevailed."</i> [<b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, p. 247] The CNT
was built on such <i>"popular assemblies,"</i> with the same radicalising
effect. It showed, in practice, that bosses (capitalist as well as
union ones) were not needed -- workers can manage their own affairs
directly. As a school for anarchism it could not be bettered as it
showed that anarchist principles were not utopian. The CNT, by
being based on workers' self-management of the class struggle, 
prepared its members for self-management of the revolution
and the new society.
</p><p>
The Spanish Revolution also shows the importance of anarchist 
education and media. In a country with a very high illiteracy 
rate, huge quantities of literature on social revolution were 
disseminated and read out at meetings for those who could not
read. Anarchist ideas were widely discussed: <i>"There were 
tens of thousands of books, pamphlets and tracts, vast and 
daring cultural and popular educational experiments (the 
Ferrer schools) that reached into almost every village and 
hamlet throughout Spain."</i> [Sam Dolgoff, <b>The Anarchist 
Collectives</b>, p. 27] The discussion of political, economic and 
social ideas was continuous, and <i>"the centro [local union hall] 
became the gathering place to discuss social issues and to 
dream and plan for the future. Those who aspired to learn to
read and write would sit around . . . studying."</i> [Mintz, 
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 160] One anarchist militant described it 
as follows:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"With what joy the orators were received whenever a meeting
was held . . . We spoke that night about everything: of the
ruling inequality of the regime and of how one had a right 
to a life without selfishness, hatred, without wars and 
suffering. We were called on another occasion and a crowd
gathered larger than the first time. That's how the pueblo
started to evolve, fighting the present regime to win
something by which they could sustain themselves, and 
dreaming of the day when it would be possible to create
that society some depict in books, others by word of mouth.
Avid for learning, they read everything, debated, discussed,
and chatted about the different modes of perfect social existence."</i> 
[Perez Cordon, quoted by Mintz, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 158]
</blockquote></p><p>
Newspapers and periodicals were extremely important. By 1919, more than
50 towns in Andalusia had their own libertarian newspapers. By 1934 the
CNT had a membership of around one million and the anarchist press 
covered all of Spain. In Barcelona the CNT published a daily, 
<b>Solidaridad Obrera</b> (Worker Solidarity), with a circulation of 
30,000. The FAI's magazine <b>Tierra y Libertad</b> (Land and Liberty) 
had a circulation of 20,000. In Gijon there was <b>Vida Obrera</b> 
(Working Life), in Seville <b>El Productor</b> (The Producer) and in 
Saragossa <b>Accion y Cultura</b> (Action and Culture), each with a
large circulation. There were many more. 
</p><p>
As well as leading struggles, organising unions, and producing books, 
papers and periodicals, the anarchists also organised libertarian schools, 
cultural centres, co-operatives, anarchist groups (the FAI), youth groups 
(the Libertarian Youth) and women's organisations (the Free Women movement). 
They applied their ideas in all walks of life and so ensured that ordinary 
people saw that anarchism was practical and relevant to them.
</p><p>
This was the great strength of the Spanish Anarchist movement. It was a
movement <i>"that, in addition to possessing a revolutionary ideology [sic],
was also capable of mobilising action around objectives firmly rooted in 
the life and conditions of the working class . . . It was this ability
periodically to identify and express widely felt needs and feelings that,
together with its presence at community level, formed the basis of the
strength of radical anarchism, and enabled it to build a mass base of
support."</i> [Nick Rider, <i>"The practice of direct action: the Barcelona 
rent strike of 1931"</i>, pp. 79-105, <b>For Anarchism</b>, David Goodway 
(Ed.), p. 99]
</p><p>
Historian Temma Kaplan stressed this in her work on the Andalusian
anarchists. She argued that the anarchists were <i>"rooted in"</i> 
social life and created <i>"a movement firmly based in working-class
culture."</i> They <i>"formed trade unions, affinity groups such as
housewives' sections, and broad cultural associations such as workers' 
circles, where the anarchist press was read and discussed."</i> Their 
<i>"great strength . . . lay in the merger of communal and militant 
trade union traditions. In towns where the vast majority worked in 
agriculture, agricultural workers' unions came to be identified with 
the community as a whole . . . anarchism . . . show[ed] that the 
demands of agricultural workers and proletarians could be combined 
with community support to create an insurrectionary situation . . . 
It would be a mistake . . . to argue that 'village anarchism' in 
Andalusia was distinct from militant unionism, or that the movement 
was a surrogate religion."</i> [<b>Anarchists of Andalusia: 1868-1903</b>, 
p. 211, p. 207 and pp. 204-5]
</p><p>
The Spanish anarchists, before and after the CNT was formed, fought 
in and out of the factory for economic, social and political issues. 
This refusal of the anarchists to ignore any aspect of life ensured 
that they found many willing to hear their message, a message based 
around the ideas of individual liberty. Such a message could do nothing 
but radicalise workers for <i>"the demands of the CNT went much further 
than those of any social democrat: with its emphasis on true equality, 
<b>autogestion</b> [self-management] and working class dignity, 
anarchosyndicalism made demands the capitalist system could not 
possibly grant to the workers."</i> [J. Romero Maura, <i>"The Spanish 
case"</i>, pp. 60-83, <b>Anarchism Today</b>, D. Apter and J. Joll (eds.), 
p. 79] 
</p><p>
Strikes, due to the lack of strike funds, depended on mutual aid 
to be won, which fostered a strong sense of solidarity and class
consciousness in the CNT membership. Strikes did not just involve 
workers. For example, workers in Jerez responded to bosses importing 
workers from Malaga <i>"with a weapon of their own -- a boycott of
those using strike-breakers. The most notable boycotts were against
landowners near Jerez who also had commercial establishments in
the city. The workers and their wives refused to buy there, and
the women stationed themselves nearby to discourage other shoppers."</i> 
[Mintz, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 102]
</p><p>
The structure and tactics of the CNT encouraged the politicisation, 
initiative and organisational skills of its members. It was a federal, 
decentralised body, based on direct discussion and decision making from 
the bottom up (<i>"The CNT tradition was to discuss and examine everything"</i>, 
as one militant put it). In addition, the CNT created a viable and 
practical example of an alternative method by which society could be 
organised. A method which was based on the ability of ordinary people to 
direct society themselves and which showed in practice that special ruling 
authorities are undesirable and unnecessary. This produced a revolutionary 
working class the likes of which the world has rarely seen. As Jose Peirats 
pointed out, <i>"above the union level, the CNT was an eminently political 
organisation . . ., a social and revolutionary organisation for agitation 
and insurrection."</i> [<b>Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 239] 
The CNT was organised in such a way as to encourage solidarity and 
class consciousness. Its organisation was based on the <b>sindicato unico</b> 
(one union) which united all workers of the same workplace in the 
same union. Instead of organising by trade, and so dividing the workers
into numerous different unions, the CNT united all workers in a
workplace into the same organisation, all trades, skilled and unskilled,
were in a single organisation and so solidarity was increased and
encouraged as well as increasing their fighting power by eliminating
divisions within the workforce. All the unions in an area were linked
together into a local federation, the local federations into a regional
federation and so on. As J. Romero Maura argued, the <i>"territorial 
basis of organisation linkage brought all the workers from one area
together and fomented working-class solidarity over and above
corporate [industry or trade] solidarity."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>p. 75]
</p><p>
Thus the structure of the CNT encouraged class solidarity and 
consciousness. In addition, being based on direct action and
self-management, the union ensured that working people became
accustomed to managing their own struggles and acting for themselves,
directly. This prepared them to manage their own personal and 
collective interests in a free society (as seen by the success
of the self-managed collectives created in the revolution). Thus
the process of self-managed struggle and direct action prepared
people for the necessities of the social revolution and the an
anarchist society -- it built, as Bakunin argued, the seeds of the
future in the present.
</p><p>
In other words, <i>"the route to radicalisation . . . came from
direct involvement in struggle and in the design of alternative
social institutions."</i> Every strike and action empowered those
involved and created a viable alternative to the existing
system. For example, while the strikes and food protests in 
Barcelona at the end of the First World War <i>"did not topple
the government, patterns of organisation established then
provided models for the anarchist movement for years to
follow."</i> [Martha A. Ackelsberg and Myrna Margulies Breithart, 
<i>"Terrains of Protest: Striking City Women"</i>, pp. 151-176, 
<b>Our Generation</b>, vol. 19, No. 1, p. 164] The same could 
be said of every strike, which confirmed Bakunin's and 
Kropotkin's stress on the strike as not only creating class 
consciousness and confidence but also the structures necessary 
to not only fight capitalism, but to replace it.
</p><p>
In summary, then, anarchism gained mass support by anarchists 
participating in mass struggles and movements, showing that its
ideas and ideals were applicable to working class experiences. In
fact, to even wonder why anarchism gained support in Spain is, to
some degree, to implicitly assume, with Marxists of various shades,
that only state socialism reflects the needs of working class people.
Discussing the question why the social democratic or Communist 
movements did not replace anarchism in Spain, historian J. Romero 
Maura correctly pointed out that this <i>"is based on the false 
assumption that the anarcho-syndicalist conception of the workers' 
struggle in pre-revolutionary society was completely at odds with 
what the <b>real</b> social process signified (hence the constant 
reference to 'religious' 'messianic' models as explanations)."</i> 
After discussing and refuting five common suggestions for the 
success of anarchism in Spain, he concluded that the <i>"explanation 
of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism's success in organising 
a mass movement with a sustained revolutionary <b>elan</b> should 
initially be sought in the very nature of the anarchist conception 
of society and of how to achieve revolution."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b> 
p. 78 and p. 65]
</p><p>
It was the revolutionary nature of the CNT that created a militant 
membership who were willing and able to use direct action to defend 
their liberty. Unlike the Marxist led German workers, organised in 
a centralised fashion and trained in the obedience required by 
hierarchy, who did nothing to stop Hitler, the Spanish working 
class (like their comrades in anarchist unions in Italy) took to 
the streets to stop fascism.
</p><p>
The revolution in Spain did not "just happen"; it was the result of 
nearly seventy years of persistent anarchist agitation and revolutionary
struggle, including a long series of strikes, protests, boycotts, 
uprisings and other forms of direct action that prepared the peasants 
and workers organise popular resistance to the attempted fascist coup 
in July 1936 and to take control of society when they had defeated it 
in the streets.
</p>

<a name="seci83"><h2>I.8.3 How were Spanish industrial collectives organised?</h2></a> 

<p>
Martha A. Ackelsberg gives us an excellent short summary of how
the industrial collectives where organised:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Pre-existing structures of worker organisation made possible
a workers' take-over of much of the industrial economy, especially
in Catalonia . . . Factory committees formed to direct production
and co-ordinate with other units within the same industry. Union
organisations co-ordinated both the production and distribution of
manufactured goods across industries and regions . . . In most 
collectivised industries, general assemblies of workers decided 
policy, while elected committees managed affairs on a day-to-day 
basis."</i> [<b>Free Women of Spain</b>, p. 100]
</blockquote></p><p>
The collectives were based on workers' democratic self-management 
of their workplaces, using productive assets that were under the 
custodianship of the entire working community and administered 
through federations of workers' associations: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The collectives organised during the Spanish Civil War were workers' 
economic associations without private property. The fact that collective 
plants were managed by those who worked in them did not mean that these 
establishments became their private property. The collective had no right 
to sell or rent all or any part of the collectivised factory or workshop. 
The rightful custodian was the CNT, the National Confederation of Workers 
Associations. But not even the CNT had the right to do as it pleased. 
Everything had to be decided and ratified by the workers themselves through 
conferences and congresses."</i> [Augustin Souchy, <b>The Anarchist 
Collectives</b>, p. 67]
</blockquote></p><p>
In Catalonia <i>"every factory elected its administrative committee 
composed of its most capable workers. Depending on the size of the 
factory, the function of these committees included inner plant
organisation, statistics, finance, correspondence, and relations with
other factories and with the community . . . Several months after
collectivisation the textile industry of Barcelona was in far better shape
than under capitalist management. Here was yet another example to show
that grass roots socialism from below does not destroy initiative. Greed
is not the only motivation in human relations."</i> [Souchy, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p 95]
</p><p>
Thus the individual collective was based on a mass assembly of those
who worked there. This assembly nominated administrative staff who
were mandated to implement the decisions of the assembly and who
had to report back, and were accountable, to that assembly. For
example, in Castellon de la Plana <i>"[e]very month the technical 
and administrative council presented the general assembly of the
Syndicate with a report which was examined and discussed if 
necessary, and finally introduced when this majority thought it
of use. Thus all the activities were known and controlled by all
the workers. We find here a practical example of libertarian
democracy."</i> [Gaston Leval, <b>Collectives in the Spanish 
Revolution</b>, p. 303] Power rested at the base of the collective, 
with <i>"all important decisions [being] taken by the general 
assemblies of the workers"</i> which <i>"were widely attended and 
regularly held . . . if an administrator did something which the 
general assembly had not authorised, he was likely to be deposed at 
the next meeting."</i> An example of this process can be seen
from the Casa Rivieria company. After the defeat of the
army coup <i>"a control committee (Comite de Control) was
named by the Barcelona Metal Workers' Union to take
over temporary control of the enterprises . . . A few
weeks after July 19th, there was the first general
assembly of the firm's workers . . . It elected an
enterprise committee (Comite de Empresa) to take control
of the firm on a more permanent basis. . . . Each
of the four sections of the firm -- the three factories
and the office staff -- held their own general assemblies
at least once a week. There they discussed matters ranging 
from the most important affairs to the most trivial."</i> 
[Robert Alexander, <b>The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil 
War</b>, vol. 1, p. 469 and p. 532]
</p><p>
In summary, the collectives in Spain were marked by workplace 
self-management. They successfully implemented the long-standing 
libertarian goal of turning industry from an autocracy to a 
democracy, of replacing wage-labour with free-labour based on the 
association of equals (see <a href="secI3.html#seci31">section I.3.1</a>). 
However, it would be a mistake to assume (as many do, particularly
Marxists) that the CNT and FAI considered the creation of self-managed 
collectives as the end of the revolution. Far from it. While they 
embodied such key libertarian principles as workers' self-management, 
they were fundamentally a product of both anarchist ideas <b>and</b> 
the specific situation in which they were created. Rather than seek 
a market system of producer co-operatives, the CNT was committed to 
the full socialisation of the economy and the creation of libertarian
communism. The collectives were, as a result, seen as development 
towards that goal rather than as an end in themselves. Moreover, as 
historian Ronald Fraser notes, it <i>"was doubtful that the CNT had 
seriously envisaged collectivisation of industry . . . before this time."</i> 
[<b>The Blood of Spain</b>, p. 212] CNT policy was opposed to the 
collectivisation decree of the Catalonian government, for example,
which formalised (and controlled) the spontaneous gains of the 
revolution as expressed by the collectives.
</p><p>
Therefore, the collectives were (initially) a form of <i>"self-management 
straddling capitalism and socialism, which we maintain would not have 
occurred had the Revolution been able to extend itself fully under the 
direction of our syndicates."</i> In other words, the revolution saw the
abolition of wage-labour but not of the wages system. Thus capitalism
was replaced by mutualism, not the socialism desired by most anarchists 
(namely libertarian communism). As economic and political development 
are closely related, the fact that the CNT did not carry out the 
<b>political</b> aspect of the revolution meant that the revolution 
in the economy was doomed to failure. As Leval stressed, in <i>"the 
industrial collectives, especially in the large towns, matters proceeded 
differently as a consequence of contradictory factors and of opposition 
created by the co-existence of social currents emanating from different 
social classes."</i> [Gaston Leval, <b>Collectives in the Spanish 
Revolution</b>, pp. 227-8 and p. 227] 
</p><p>
That the initial forms of the revolution were not as expected should,
perhaps, be unsurprising. After all, no social transformation ever 
exactly matches the hopes of those who had advocated it and the people 
had more pressing matters to attend to such as re-starting production 
and fighting Franco. So it is utterly understandable that the collectives 
only embodied some and not all aspects of aims of the CNT and FAI! 
Moreover, social change does not produce instant perfect transformations
and the workers <i>"had to build new circuits of consumption and 
distribution, new types of social relations between the proletariat 
and the peasantry, and new modes of production."</i> [Abel Paz, 
<b>Durruti in the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 451] That process was
started, even if it were initially incomplete. That a wider goal was 
envisioned by these organisations can be seen from the fact that union 
activists sought to extend the degree of socialisation. So, and again 
in line with libertarian theory, the collectives also expressed a 
desire to co-operate within and across industries 
(see <a href="secI3.html#seci35">section I.3.5</a>). 
These attempts at federation and co-ordination will be discussed in 
<a href="secI8.html#seci84">next section</a>, along with 
some of the conclusions that can be drawn from these
experiments. For, as would be expected, this attempt
to introduce libertarian socialism had its drawbacks 
as well as successes.
</p>

<a name="seci84"><h2>I.8.4 How were the Spanish industrial collectives co-ordinated?</h2></a>

<p>
The methods of co-operation tried by the collectives varied considerably.
Initially, there were very few attempts to co-ordinate economic activities
beyond the workplace. This is hardly surprising, given that the overwhelming
need was to restart production, convert a civilian economy to a wartime one 
and to ensure that the civilian population and militias were supplied with 
necessary goods. This lead to a situation of anarchist mutualism developing, 
with many collectives selling the product of their own labour on the market.
</p><p>
This lead to some economic problems as there existed no framework of
institutions between collectives to ensure efficient co-ordination of
activity and so lead to pointless competition between collectives (which 
led to even more problems). As there were initially no confederations of 
collectives nor mutual/communal banks this lead to the continuation of 
any inequalities that initially existed between collectives (due to the 
fact that workers took over rich and poor capitalist firms) and 
it made the many ad hoc attempts at mutual aid between collectives 
difficult and often of an ad hoc nature. 
</p><p>
Given that the CNT programme of libertarian communism recognised that a 
fully co-operative society must be based upon production for use, CNT 
militants fought against this system of mutualism and for inter-workplace 
co-ordination. They managed to convince their fellow workers of the 
difficulties of mutualism by free debate and discussion within their 
unions and collectives. Given this the degree of socialisation varied 
over time (as would be expected). Initially, after the defeat of Franco's 
forces, there was little formal co-ordination and organisation. The most 
important thing was to get production started again. However, the 
needs of co-ordination soon became obvious (as predicted in anarchist
theory and the programme of the CNT). Gaston Leval gives the example
of Hospitalet del Llobregat with regards to this process:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Local industries went through stages almost universally adopted in
that revolution . . . [I]n the first instance, <b>comites</b> nominated
by the workers employed in them [were organised]. Production and
sales continued in each one. But very soon it was clear that this
situation gave rise to competition between the factories . . . 
creating rivalries which were incompatible with the socialist and
libertarian outlook. So the CNT launched the watchword: 'All 
industries must be ramified in the Syndicates, completely socialised,
and the regime of solidarity which we have always advocated be 
established once and for all.'</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The idea won support immediately."</i> [<b>Collectives in the Spanish 
Revolution</b>, pp. 291-2]
</p><p></blockquote>
Another example was the woodworkers' union which had a massive debate on 
socialisation and decided to do so (the shopworkers' union had a similar 
debate, but the majority of workers rejected socialisation). According 
to Ronald Fraser a <i>"union delegate would go round the small shops, 
point out to the workers that the conditions were unhealthy and 
dangerous, that the revolution was changing all this, and secure 
their agreement to close down and move to the union-built Double-X 
and the 33 EU."</i> [Ronald Fraser, <b>Blood of Spain</b>, p. 222]
</p><p>
A plenum of syndicates met in December of 1936 and formulated norms for
socialisation in which the inefficiency of the capitalist industrial
system was analysed. The report of the plenum stated: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The major defect of most small manufacturing shops is fragmentation 
and lack of technical/commercial preparation. This prevents their
modernisation and consolidation into better and more efficient units 
of production, with better facilities and co-ordination . . . For us,
socialisation must correct these deficiencies and systems of organisation
in every industry . . . To socialise an industry, we must consolidate 
the different units of each branch of industry in accordance with a 
general and organic plan which will avoid competition and other 
difficulties impeding the good and efficient organisation of 
production and distribution."</i> [quoted by Souchy, <b>Anarchist
Collectives</b>, p. 83]
</blockquote></p><p>
As Souchy pointed out, this document is very important in the evolution of
collectivisation, because it indicates a realisation that <i>"workers must
take into account that partial collectivisation will in time degenerate
into a kind of bourgeois co-operativism."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 83] 
Thus many collectives did not compete with each other for profits, as 
surpluses were pooled and distributed on a wider basis than the individual 
collective. 
</p><p>
This process went on in many different unions and collectives and, 
unsurprisingly, the forms of co-ordination agreed to lead to different 
forms of organisation in different areas and industries, as would be 
expected in a free society. However, the two most important forms can 
be termed syndicalisation and confederationalism (we will ignore the 
forms created by the collectivisation decree as these were not created 
by the workers themselves). 
</p><p>
<i><b>Syndicalisation</b></i> (our term) meant that the CNT's industrial 
union ran the whole industry. This solution was tried by the woodworkers' 
union after extensive debate. One section of the union, <i>"dominated by 
the FAI, maintained that anarchist self-management meant that the 
workers should set up and operate autonomous centres of production so as 
to avoid the threat of bureaucratisation."</i> However, those in favour of 
syndicalisation won the day and production was organised in the hands of 
the union, with administration posts and delegate meetings elected by the 
rank and file. However, the <i>"major failure . . . (and which supported the 
original anarchist objection) was that the union became like a large firm"</i> 
and its <i>"structure grew increasingly rigid."</i> [Ronald Fraser, <b>Blood 
of Spain</b>, p. 222] According to one militant, <i>"From the outside it 
began to look like an American or German trust"</i> and the workers found 
it difficult to secure any changes and <i>"felt they weren't particularly
involved in decision making."</i> [quoted by Fraser, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 222
and p. 223] However, this did not stop workers re-electing almost all posts
at the first Annual General Assembly.
</p><p>
In the end, the major difference between the union-run industry and a
capitalist firm organisationally appeared to be that workers could vote for 
(and recall) the industry management at relatively regular General Assembly 
meetings. While a vast improvement on capitalism, it is hardly the best 
example of participatory self-management in action. However, it must be
stressed that the economic problems caused by the Civil War and Stalinist 
led counter-revolution obviously would have had an effect on the internal 
structure of any industry and so we cannot say that the form of organisation 
created was totally responsible for any marginalisation that took place. 
</p><p>
The other important form of co-operation was what we will term 
<i><b>confederalisation</b></i>. This system was based on horizontal 
links between workplaces (via the CNT union) and allowed a maximum of 
self-management <b>and</b> mutual aid. This form of co-operation was 
practised by the Badalona textile industry (and had been defeated in the 
woodworkers' union). It was based upon each workplace being run by its 
elected management, selling its own production, getting its own orders and 
receiving the proceeds. However, <i>"everything each mill did was reported 
to the union which charted progress and kept statistics. If the union felt 
that a particular factory was not acting in the best interests of the 
collectivised industry as a whole, the enterprise was informed and asked 
to change course."</i> This system ensured that the <i>"dangers of the big 
'union trust' as of the atomised collective were avoided."</i> [Fraser, 
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 229] According to one militant, the union 
<i>"acted more as a socialist control of collectivised industry 
than as a direct hierarchised executive."</i> The federation of
collectives created <i>"the first social security system in Spain"</i>
(which included retirement pay, free medicines, sick and maternity pay)
and a compensation fund was organised <i>"to permit the economically weaker 
collectives to pay their workers, the amount each collective contributed 
being in direct proportion to the number of workers employed."</i> [quoted 
by Fraser, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 229]
</p><p>
As can be seen, the industrial collectives co-ordinated their activity 
in many ways, with varying degrees of success. As would be expected, 
mistakes were made and different solutions found as an anarchist 
society can hardly be produced "overnight" (as discussed in 
<a href="secH2.html#sech25">section H.2.5</a>,
anarchists have always been aware that social transformation takes
time). So it is hardly surprising that the workers of the CNT faced 
numerous problems and had to develop their self-management experiment 
as objective conditions allowed them to. Unfortunately, thanks to 
fascist aggression and Communist Party and Republican back-stabbing, 
the experiment did not last long enough to fully answer all the 
questions we have about the viability of the solutions tried. 
Given time, however, we are sure they would have solved the problems 
they faced for the social experimentation which was conducted was
not only highly successful but also rich in promise.
</p>

<a name="seci85"><h2>I.8.5 How were the Spanish agricultural co-operatives organised and co-ordinated?</h2></a>

<p>
Jose Peirats described collectivisation among the peasantry as follows:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The expropriated lands were turned over to the peasant syndicates, and it
was these syndicates that organised the first collectives. Generally the
holdings of small property owners were respected, always on the condition
that only they or their families would work the land, without employing
wage labour. In areas like Catalonia, where the tradition of petty peasant
ownership prevailed, the land holdings were scattered. There were no
great estates. Many of these peasants, together with the CNT, organised
collectives, pooling their land, animals, tools, chickens, grain,
fertiliser, and even their harvested crops.</i></blockquote> 
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Privately owned farms located in the midst of collectives interfered with
efficient cultivation by splitting up the collectives into disconnected
parcels. To induce owners to move, they were given more or even better
land located on the perimeter of the collective.
</p><p>
"The collectivist who had nothing to contribute to the collective was
admitted with the same rights and the same duties as the others. In some
collectives, those joining had to contribute their money (Girondella in
Catalonia, Lagunarrotta in Aragn, and Cervera del Maestra in Valencia)."</i> 
[<b>The Anarchist Collectives</b>, p. 112]
</blockquote></p><p>
Dolgoff observed that <i>"supreme power was vested in, and actually
exercised by, the membership in general assemblies, and all power derived
from, and flowed back to, the grass roots organisations of the people."</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p 119fn] Peirats also noted that the collectives were
<i>"fiercely democratic"</i> as regards decision-making. For example, in
Ademuz <i>"assemblies were held every Saturday"</i> while in Alcolea de
Cinca <i>"they were held whenever necessary."</i> [<b>Anarchists in the
Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 146] Eyewitness Gaston Leval summarised this
explosion in self-management as follows: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Regular general membership meetings were convoked weekly, bi-weekly, 
or monthly . . . and these meetings were completely free of the tensions 
and recriminations which inevitably emerge when the power of decisions 
is vested in a few individuals -- even if democratically elected. The 
Assemblies were open for everyone to participate in the proceedings. 
Democracy embraced all social life. In most cases, even the 'individualists' 
who were not members of the collective could participate in the discussions, 
and they were listened to by the collectivists."</i> [<b>The Anarchist
Collectives</b>, p 119fn] 
</blockquote></p><p>
Work was <i>"usually done in groups on a co-operative basis. In smaller
collectives, all workers gathered to discuss the work needed to be done
and how to allocate it. In larger collectives, representatives of each
work group would gather at regular intervals. General assemblies of the
collective met on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis, and took up
issues ranging from hours and wages to the distribution of food and 
clothing."</i> [Martha A. Ackelsberg in <b>Free Women of Spain</b>, 
p. 106] It was in these face-to-face assemblies that decisions upon 
the distribution of resources were decided both within and outwith the 
collective. Here, when considering the importance of mutual aid, appeals 
were made to an individual's sense of empathy. As one activist remembered:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"There were, of course, those who didn't want to share and who said that 
each collective should take care of itself. But they were usually convinced 
in the assemblies. We would try to speak to them in terms they understood. 
We'd ask, 'Did you think it was fair when the <b>cacique</b> [local boss] 
let people starve if there wasn't enough work?' and they said, 'Of course 
not.' They would eventually come around. Don't forget, there were three 
hundred thousand collectivists [in Aragn], but only ten thousand of us 
had been members of the CNT. We had a lot of educating to do."</i> [quoted 
by Ackelsberg, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 107]
</blockquote></p><p>
In addition, regional federations of collectives were formed in many
areas of Spain (for example, in Aragn and the Levant). The federations 
were created at congresses to which the collectives in an area sent 
delegates. These congresses agreed a series of general rules about how 
the federation would operate and what commitments the affiliated collectives 
would have to each other. The congress elected an administration council, 
which took responsibility for implementing agreed policy. The Levant 
Federation was organised as follows:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The 900 Collectives were brought together in 54 cantonal federations
which grouped themselves and at the same time subdivided into five 
provincial federations which at the top level ended in the Regional
<b>Comite</b> . . . [This] was nominated directly by the annual 
congresses answerable to them and to the hundreds of peasant 
delegates chosen by their comrades . . . . It was also on their 
initiative that the Levante Federation was divided into 26 general 
sections in accordance with specialisations in work and other 
activities. Those 26 sections constituted a whole which embraced
probably for the first time in history outside the State and 
governmental structures, the whole of social life."</i> [Gaston Leval, 
<b>Collectives in the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 154]
</blockquote></p><p>
The Aragn Federation statues were agreed at its founding congress
in mid-February 1937 by 500 delegates. These stated that there
would be <i>"as many county federations"</i> as deemed <i>"necessary
for the proper running of the collectives"</i> and the Federation
would <i>"hold its ordinary congress at intervals of six months,
in addition to whatever extraordinary ones . . . deemed appropriate."</i>
New collectives could join after <i>"consent in general assembly of
the inhabitants of the collective"</i>. The federation aimed to 
<i>"coordinate the economic potential of the region and . . . be 
geared towards solidarity in accordance with the norms of autonomy
and federalism."</i> [quoted by Jose Peirats, <b>The CNT in the
Spanish Revolution</b>, vol. 1, p. 240]
</p><p>
These federations had many tasks. They ensured the distribution of surplus
produce to the front line and to the cities, cutting out middlemen and
ensuring the end of exploitation. They also arranged for exchanges between 
collectives to take place. In addition, the federations allowed the 
individual collectives to pool resources together in order to improve the 
infrastructure of the area (building roads, canals, hospitals and so on) 
and invest in means of production which no one collective could afford.
In this way individual collectives pooled their resources, increased 
and improved the means of production ad the social and economic 
infrastructure of their regions. All this, combined with an increase of 
consumption in the villages and towns as well as the feeding of militia 
men and women fighting the fascists at the front.
</p><p>
Rural collectivisations allowed the potential creative energy that
existed among the rural workers and peasants to be unleashed, an energy
that had been wasted under private property. The popular assemblies allowed
community problems and improvements to be identified and solved directly,
drawing upon the ideas and experiences of everyone and enriched by 
discussion and debate. To quote one participant: <i>"We were always 
prepared to adapt our ideas in every area of collective life if things
did not work. That was the advantage of our collectives over state-created
ones like those in Russia. We were free. Each village could do as it 
pleased. There was local stimulus, local initiative."</i> [quoted by 
Ronald Fraser, <b>Blood of Spain</b>, p. 357] As we discuss in the 
the <a href="secI8.html#seci86">next section</a>, 
this enabled rural Spain to be transformed from one marked by poverty 
and fear into one of increased well-being and hope.
</p>

<a name="seci86"><h2>I.8.6 What did the agricultural collectives accomplish?</h2></a>

<p>
Most basically, self-management in collectives combined with co-operation in 
rural federations allowed an improvement in quality of rural life. From a 
purely economic viewpoint, production increased and as historian Benjamin 
Martin summarises: <i>"Though it is impossible to generalise about the rural 
land take-overs, there is little doubt that the quality of life for most 
peasants who participated in co-operatives and collectives notably improved."</i> 
[<b>The Agony of Modernisation</b>, p. 394] Another historian, Antony Beevor,
notes that <i>"[i]n terms of production and improved standards for the peasants,
the self-managed collectives appear to have been successful. They also seem to 
have encouraged harmonious community relations."</i> [<b>The Spanish Civil
War</b>, p. 95]
</p><p>
More importantly, however, this improvement in the quality of life included 
an increase in freedom as well as in consumption. To re-quote the member of 
the Beceite collective in Aragn: <i>"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."</i> [quoted by Ronald Fraser, <b>Blood of 
Spain</b>, p. 288] As Beevor suggests, <i>"self-managed collectives were much 
happier when no better off than before. What mattered was that the labourers 
ran their own collectives -- a distinct contrast to the disasters of state 
collectivisation in the Soviet Union."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 95] Here 
are a few examples provided by Jose Peirats: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In Montblanc the collective dug up the old useless vines and 
planted new vineyards. The land, improved by modern cultivation 
with tractors, yielded much bigger and better crops . . . Many 
Aragn collectives built new roads and repaired old ones, installed 
modern flour mills, and processed agricultural and animal waste 
into useful industrial products. Many of these improvements were 
first initiated by the collectives. Some villages, like Calanda, 
built parks and baths. Almost all collectives established libraries, 
schools, and cultural centres."</i> [<b>The Anarchist Collectives</b>, 
 p. 116]
</blockquote></p><p>
Gaston Leval pointed out that <i>"the Peasant Federation of Levant . . .
produced more than half of the total orange crop in Spain: almost four
million kilos (1 kilo equals about 2 and one-fourth pounds). It then
transported and sold through its own commercial organisation (no
middlemen) more than 70% of the crop. (The Federation's commercial
organisation included its own warehouses, trucks, and boats. Early in
1938 the export section established its own agencies in France: 
Marseilles, Perpignan, Bordeaux, Cherbourg, and Paris.) Out of a total
of 47,000 hectares in all Spain devoted to rice production, the
collective in the Province of Valencia cultivated 30,000 hectares."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 124] To quote Peirats again: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Preoccupation with cultural and pedagogical innovations was an event 
without precedent in rural Spain. The Amposta collectivists organised 
classes for semi-literates, kindergartens, and even a school of arts 
and professions. The Seros schools were free to all neighbours, 
collectivists or not. Grau installed a school named after its most 
illustrious citizen, Joaquin Costa. The Calanda collective (pop. only 
4,500) schooled 1,233 children. The best students were sent to the
Lyceum in Caspe, with all expenses paid by the collective. The Alcoriza
(pop. 4,000) school was attended by 600 children. Many of the schools
were installed in abandoned convents. In Granadella (pop. 2,000), classes
were conducted in the abandoned barracks of the Civil Guards. Graus
organised a print library and a school of arts and professions, attended
by 60 pupils. The same building housed a school of fine arts and high
grade museum. In some villages a cinema was installed for the first
time. The Penalba cinema was installed in a church. Viladecana built an
experimental agricultural laboratory.</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 116]</blockquote>
</p><p>
Peirats summed up the accomplishments of the agricultural collectives as
follows: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In distribution the collectives' co-operatives eliminated middlemen, 
small merchants, wholesalers, and profiteers, thus greatly reducing 
consumer prices. The collectives eliminated most of the parasitic 
elements from rural life, and would have wiped them out altogether 
if they were not protected by corrupt officials and by the political 
parties. Non-collectivised areas benefited indirectly from the 
lower prices as well as from free services often rendered by the
collectives (laundries, cinemas, schools, barber and beauty parlours, 
etc.)."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 114]
</blockquote></p><p>
Leval emphasised the following achievements (among others): 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In the agrarian collectives solidarity was practised to the greatest 
degree. Not only was every person assured of the necessities, but the 
district federations increasingly adopted the principle of mutual aid 
on an inter-collective scale. For this purpose they created common 
reserves to help out villages less favoured by nature. In Castile 
special institutions for this purpose were created. In industry this 
practice seems to have begun in Hospitalet, on the Catalan railways, 
and was applied later in Alcoy. Had the political compromise not 
impeded open socialisation, the practices of mutual aid would have 
been much more generalised . . . A conquest of enormous importance 
was the right of women to livelihood, regardless of occupation or 
function. In about half of the agrarian collectives, the women 
received the same wages as men; in the rest the women received 
less, apparently on the principle that they rarely live alone . . .
In all the agrarian collectives of Aragn, Catalonia, Levant, Castile,
Andalusia, and Estremadura, the workers formed groups to divide the 
labour or the land; usually they were assigned to definite areas. 
Delegates elected by the work groups met with the collective's 
delegate for agriculture to plan out the work. This typical 
organisation arose quite spontaneously, by local initiative . . . 
In addition . . . the collective as a whole met in weekly, bi-weekly
or monthly assembly . . . The assembly reviewed the activities of
the councillors it named, and discussed special cases and unforeseen
problems. All inhabitants -- men and women, producers and non-producers
-- took part in the discussion and decisions . . . In land cultivation 
the most significant advances were: the rapidly increased use of 
machinery and irrigation; greater diversification; and forestation. 
In stock raising: the selection and multiplication of breeds; the 
adaptation of breeds to local conditions; and large-scale construction 
of collective stock barns."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 166-167]
</blockquote></p><p>
Collectivisation, as Graham Kelsey notes, <i>"allowed a rationalisation
of village societies and a more efficient use of the economic resources
available. Instead of carpenters and bricklayers remaining idle because
no wealthy landowner had any use for their services they were put to
work constructing agricultural facilities and providing the villages
with the kind of social amenities which until then they had scarcely been 
able to imagine."</i> [<b>Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism
and the State</b>, p. 169] Martha A. Ackelsberg sums up the experience well:
<blockquote></p><p>
<i>"The achievements of these collectives were extensive. In many
areas they maintained, if not increased, agricultural production
[not forgetting that many young men were at the front line], 
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. Some of these remain to this day as
lasting contributions of the collectives to the infrastructure
of rural Spain. The collectivists also arranged for the transfer 
of surplus produce from wealthier collectives to those experiencing 
shortages, either directly from village to village or through
mechanisms set up by regional committees."</i> [<b>The Free Women 
of Spain</b>, pp. 106-7]
</blockquote></p><p>
As well as this inter-collective solidarity, the rural collectives
also supplied food to the front-line troops:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The collectives voluntarily contributed enormous stocks of provisions and
other supplies to the fighting troops. Utiel sent 1,490 litres of oil and
300 bushels of potatoes to the Madrid front (in addition to huge stocks of
beans, rice, buckwheat, etc.). Porales de Tujana sent great quantities of
bread, oil, flour, and potatoes to the front, and eggs, meat, and milk to
the military hospital.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The efforts of the collectives take on added significance when we take
into account that their youngest and most vigorous workers were fighting
in the trenches. 200 members of the little collective of Vilaboi were at
the front; from Viledecans, 60; Amposta, 300; and Calande, 500."</i> 
[Jose Peirats, <b>The Anarchist Collectives</b>, p. 120]
</blockquote></p><p>
Therefore, as well as significant economic achievements, the
collectives ensured social and political ones too. Solidarity
was practised and previously marginalised people took direct
and full management of the affairs of their communities, 
transforming them to meet their own needs and desires. 
</p>

<a name="seci87"><h2>I.8.7 Were the rural collectives created by force?</h2></a>

<p>
No, they were not. The myth that the rural collectives were created by 
"terror," organised and carried out by the anarchist militia, was 
started by the Stalinists of the Spanish Communist Party. More 
recently, certain right-wing "libertarians" have warmed up and repeated 
these Stalinist fabrications. Anarchists have been disproving these 
allegations since 1936 and it is worthwhile to do so again here.
As Vernon Richards noted: <i>"However discredited Stalinism may appear 
to be today the fact remains that the Stalinist lies and interpretation 
of the Spanish Civil War still prevail, presumably because it suits the
political prejudices of those historians who are currently interpreting 
it."</i> [<i>"Introduction"</i>, Gaston Leval, <b>Collectives in the Spanish 
Revolution</b>, p. 11] Here we shall present evidence to refute claims 
that the rural collectives were created by force.
</p><p>
Firstly, we should point out that rural collectives were created in many
different areas of Spain, such as the Levant (900 collectives), Castile (300)
and Estremadera (30), where the anarchist militia did not exist. In Catalonia, 
for example, the CNT militia passed through many villages on its way to
Aragn and only around 40 collectives were created unlike the 450 in Aragn. 
In other words, the rural collectivisation process occurred independently of 
the existence of anarchist troops, with the majority of the 1,700 rural
collectives created in areas without a predominance of anarchist militias.
</p><p>
One historian, Ronald Fraser, seems to imply that collectives were 
imposed upon the Aragn population. As he put it, the <i>"collectivisation, 
carried out under the general cover, if not necessarily the direct agency, 
of CNT militia columns, represented a revolutionary minority's attempt to 
control not only production but consumption for egalitarian purposes and 
the needs of the war."</i> Notice that he does not suggest that the anarchist 
militia actually <b>imposed</b> the collectives, a claim for which there is 
little or no evidence. Moreover, Fraser presents a somewhat contradictory 
narrative to the facts he presents. On the one hand, he suggests that 
<i>"[o]bligatory collectivisation was justified, in some libertarians' eyes,
by a reasoning closer to war communism than to libertarian communism."</i> 
On the other hand, he presents extensive evidence that the collectives did 
not have a 100% membership rate. How can collectivisation be obligatory if 
people remain outside the collectives? Similarly, he talks of how <b>some</b> 
CNT militia leaders justified <i>"[f]orced collectivisation"</i> in terms of 
the war effort while acknowledging the official CNT policy of opposing 
forced collectivisation, an opposition expressed in practice as only around
20 (i.e., 5%) of the collectives were total. [<b>Blood of Spain</b>, p. 370, 
p. 349 and p. 366] This is shown in his own book as collectivists interviewed 
continually note that people remained outside their collectives!
</p><p>
Thus Fraser's attempts to paint the Aragn collectives as a form of <i>"war
communism"</i> imposed upon the population by the CNT and obligatory for
all fails to co-incidence with the evidence he presents.
</p><p>
Fraser states that <i>"[t]here was no need to dragoon them [the peasants] 
at pistol point [into collectives]: the coercive climate, in which 'fascists' 
were being shot, was sufficient. 'Spontaneous' and 'forced' collectives 
existed, as did willing and unwilling collectivists within them."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 349] Therefore, his implied suggestion that the 
Aragn collectives were imposed upon the rural population is based 
upon the insight that there was a <i>"coercive climate"</i> in Aragn 
at the time. Of course a civil war against fascism would produce a 
<i>"coercive climate"</i> particularly near the front line. However, the 
CNT can hardly be blamed for that. As historian Gabriel Jackson summarised, 
while such executions took place the CNT did not conduct a general wave
of terror:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"the anarchists made a constant effort to separate active political 
enemies from those who were simply bourgeois by birth or ideology or 
economic function. Anarchist political committees wanted to know 
what the accused monarchists or conservatives had done, not simply 
what they thought or how they voted . . . There is no inherent 
contradiction involved in recognising both that the revolution 
included some violence and that its social and economic results 
. . . were approved of by the majority of peasants in an area."</i> 
[quoted in Jose Peirats, <b>The CNT in the Spanish Revolution</b>,
vol. 1, p. 146]</blockquote>
</p><p>
This was a life and death struggle against fascism, in which the 
fascists were systematically murdering vast numbers of anarchists, 
socialists and republicans in the areas under their control. It 
is hardly surprising that some anarchist troops took the law into 
their own hands and murdered some of those who supported and would 
help the fascists. Given what was going on in fascist Spain, and 
the experience of fascism in Germany and Italy, the CNT militia knew 
exactly what would happen to them and their friends and family if 
they lost.
</p><p>
The question does arise, however, of whether the climate was made so 
coercive by the war and the nearness of the anarchist militia that 
individual choice was impossible. The facts speak for themselves. At 
its peak, rural collectivisation in Aragn embraced around 70% of the 
population in the area saved from fascism. Around 30% of the population 
felt safe enough not to join a collective, a sizeable percentage. If 
the collectives had been created by anarchist terror or force, we would
expect a figure of 100% membership. This was not the case, indicating 
the basically voluntary nature of the experiment (we should point out 
that other figures suggest a lower number of collectivists which makes 
the forced collectivisation argument even less likely). Historian Antony
Beevor (while noting that there <i>"had undoubtedly been pressure, and
no doubt force was used on some occasions in the fervour after the rising"</i>) 
just stated the obvious when he wrote that <i>"the very fact that
every village was a mixture of collectivists and individualists shows
that peasants had not been forced into communal farming at the point
of a gun."</i> [<b>The Spanish Civil War</b>, p. 206] In addition, if the
CNT militia had forced peasants into collectives we would expect the
membership of the collectives to peak almost overnight, not grow slowly
over time:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"At the regional congress of collectives, held at Caspe in mid-February 1937, 
nearly 80 000 collectivists were represented from 'almost all the villages
of the region.' This, however, was but a beginning. By the end of April 
the number of collectivists had risen to 140,000; by the end of the first
week of May to 180,000; and by the end of June to 300,000."</i> [Graham Kelsey, 
<i>"Anarchism in Aragn,"</i> pp. 60-82, <b>Spain in Conflict 1931-1939</b>,
Martin Blinkhorn (ed.), p. 61]
</blockquote></p><p>
If the collectives had been created by force, then their membership would
have been 300,000 in February, 1937, not increasing steadily to reach that
number four months later. Neither can it be claimed that the increase was
due to new villages being collectivised, as almost all villages had sent
delegates in February. This indicates that many peasants joined the
collectives because of the advantages associated with common labour, the 
increased resources it placed at their hands and the fact that the surplus
wealth which had in the previous system been monopolised by the few was
used instead to raise the standard of living of the entire community.
</p><p>
The voluntary nature of the collectives is again emphasised by the number of
collectives which allowed people to remain outside. There <i>"were few 
villages which were completely collectivised."</i> [Beevor, <b>Op. Cit.</b>,
p. 94] One eye-witness in Aragn, an anarchist schoolteacher, noted that the 
forcing of smallholders into a collective <i>"wasn't a widespread problem, 
because there weren't more than twenty or so villages where collectivisation 
was total and no one was allowed to remain outside."</i> [quoted by Fraser,
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 366] Instead of forcing the minority in a village to agree 
with the wishes of the majority, the vast majority (95%) of Aragn collectives 
stuck to their libertarian principles and allowed those who did not wish to 
join to remain outside.
</p><p>
So, only around 20 were <i>"total"</i> collectives (out of 450) and around 30% 
of the population felt safe enough <b>not</b> to join. In other words, in the 
vast majority of collectives those joining could see that those who did not 
were safe. These figures indicate of the basically spontaneous and voluntary 
nature of the movement as do the composition of the new municipal councils 
created after July 19th. As Graham Kesley notes: <i>"What is immediately 
noticeable from the results is that although the region has often been 
branded as one controlled by anarchists to the total exclusion of all other 
forces, the CNT was far from enjoying the degree of absolute domination often 
implied and inferred."</i> [<b>Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and 
the State</b>, p. 198] 
</p><p>
In his account of the rural revolution, Burnett Bolloten noted that 
it <i>"embraced more than 70 percent of the population"</i> in liberated
Aragn and that <i>"many of the 450 collectives of the region were 
largely voluntary"</i> although <i>"it must be emphasised that this 
singular development was in some measure due to the presence of 
militiamen from the neighbouring region of Catalonia, the immense 
majority of whom were members of the CNT and FAI."</i> [<b>The Spanish 
Civil War</b>, p. 74] This, it should be noted, was not denied by 
anarchists. As Gaston Leval pointed out, <i>"it is true that the 
presence of these forces . . . favoured indirectly these constructive 
achievements by preventing active resistance by the supporters of the 
bourgeois republic and of fascism."</i> [<b>Collectives in the Spanish 
Revolution</b>, p. 90]
</p><p>
So the presence of the militia changed the balance of
class forces in Aragn by destroying the capitalist state (i.e. the local
bosses -- caciques -- could not get state aid to protect their property) 
and many landless workers took over the land. The presence of the militia 
ensured that land could be taken over by destroying the capitalist "monopoly 
of force" that existed before the revolution (the power of which will be
highlighted below) and so the CNT militia allowed the possibility of 
experimentation by the Aragnese population. This class war in the 
countryside is reflected by Bolloten: <i>"If the individual farmer 
viewed with dismay the swift and widespread collectivisation of 
agriculture, the farm workers of the Anarchosyndicalist CNT and the 
Socialist UGT saw it as the commencement of a new era."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 63] Both were mass organisations and supported collectivisation. 
</p><p>
Therefore, anarchist militias allowed the rural working class to abolish the
artificial scarcity of land created by private property (and enforced by the
state). The rural bosses obviously viewed with horror the possibility that 
they could not exploit day workers' labour (as Bolloten pointed out <i>"the 
collective system of agriculture threaten[ed] to drain the rural labour 
market of wage workers."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 62]). Little wonder the 
richer peasants and landowners hated the collectives. A report on the 
district of Valderrobes which indicates popular support for the collectives:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Collectivisation was nevertheless opposed by opponents on the right 
and adversaries on the left. If the eternally idle who have been expropriated
had been asked what they thought of collectivisation, some would have
replied that it was robbery and others a dictatorship. But, for the
elderly, the day workers, the tenant farmers and small proprietors who
had always been under the thumb of the big landowners and heartless
usurers, it appeared as salvation."</i> [quoted by Bolloten, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 71]
</blockquote></p><p>
However, many historians ignore the differences in class that existed in 
the countryside and explain the rise in collectives in Aragn (and ignore 
those elsewhere) as the result of the CNT militia. For example, Fraser: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Very rapidly collectives . . . began to spring up. It 
did not happen on instructions from the CNT leadership -- no more than 
had the [industrial] collectives in Barcelona. Here, as there, the 
initiative came from CNT militants; here, as there, the 'climate' 
for social revolution in the rearguard was created by CNT armed strength: 
the anarcho-syndicalists' domination of the streets of Barcelona was 
re-enacted in Aragn as the CNT militia columns, manned mainly by 
Catalan anarcho-syndicalist workers, poured in. Where a nucleus of 
anarcho-syndicalists existed in a village, it seized the moment to carry 
out the long-awaited revolution and collectivised spontaneously. Where 
there was none, villagers could find themselves under considerable pressure 
from the militias to collectivise."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 347] 
</blockquote>
</p><p>
Fraser implies that the revolution was mostly imported into Aragn
from Catalonia. However, as he himself notes, the CNT column leaders (except
Durruti) <i>"opposed"</i> the creation of the Council of Aragn (a confederation 
for the collectives). Hardly an example of Catalan CNT imposed social revolution! 
Moreover, the Aragn CNT was a widespread and popular organisation, suggesting 
that the idea that the collectives were imported into the region by the Catalan 
CNT is simply <b>false</b>. Fraser states that in <i>"some [of the Aragnese 
villages] there was a flourishing CNT, in others the UGT was strongest, and 
in only too many there was no unionisation at all."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 350 and p. 348] The question arises of how extensive was that strength. 
The evidence shows that the rural CNT in Aragn was extensive, strong and 
growing, so making the suggestion of imposed collectives a false one. In fact,
by the 1930s the <i>"authentic peasant base of the CNT . . . lay in Aragn."</i>
CNT growth in Zaragoza <i>"provided a springboard for a highly effective 
libertarian agitation in lower Aragn, particularly among the impoverished 
labourers and debt-ridden peasantry of the dry steppes region."</i> [Murray 
Bookchin, <b>The Spanish Anarchists</b>, p. 203]
</blockquote></p><p>
Graham Kelsey, in his social history of the CNT in Aragn between 1930 
and 1937, provides more evidence on this matter. He points out that as well 
as the <i>"spread of libertarian groups and the increasing consciousness 
among CNT members of libertarian theories . . . contribu[ting] to the growth 
of the anarchosyndicalist movement in Aragn"</i> the existence of 
<i>"agrarian unrest"</i> also played an important role in that growth. This 
all lead to the <i>"revitalisation of the CNT network in Aragn"</i>. So 
by 1936, the CNT had built upon the <i>"foundations laid in 1933"</i> and 
<i>"had finally succeeded in translating the very great strength of the urban 
trade-union organisation in Zaragoza into a regional network of considerable 
extent."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 80-81, p. 82 and p. 134]
</p><p>
Kelsey notes the long history of anarchism in Aragn, dating back to the 
late 1860s. However, before the 1910s there had been little gains in rural 
Aragn by the CNT due to the power of local bosses (called <b>caciques</b>):
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Local landowners and small industrialists, the <b>caciques</b> of provincial 
Aragn, made every effort to enforce the closure of these first rural
anarchosyndicalist cells [created after 1915]. By the time of the first
rural congress of the Aragnese CNT confederation in the summer of 1923,
much of the progress achieved through the organisation's considerable
propaganda efforts had been countered by repression elsewhere."</i> 
[<i>"Anarchism in Aragn"</i>, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 62]
</blockquote></p><p>
A CNT activist indicated the power of these bosses and how difficult
it was to be a union member in Aragn:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Repression is not the same in the large cities as it is in the villages
where everyone knows everybody else and where the Civil Guards are
immediately notified of a comrade's slightest movement. Neither friends
nor relatives are spared. All those who do not serve the state's repressive
forces unconditionally are pursued, persecuted and on occasions beaten
up."</i> [quoted by Kelsey, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 74]
</blockquote></p><p>
However, while there were some successes in organising rural unions, 
even in 1931 <i>"propaganda campaigns which led to the establishment of 
scores of village trade-union cells, were followed by a counter-offensive 
from village <b>caciques</b> which forced them to close."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b> 
p. 67] Even in the face of this repression the CNT grew and <i>"from the end 
of 1932"</i> there was <i>"a successful expansion of the anarchosyndicalist 
movement into several parts of the region where previously it had never 
penetrated."</i> [Kesley, <b>Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism 
and the State</b>, p. 185] This growth was built upon in 1936, with 
increased rural activism which had slowly eroded the power of the 
<b>caciques</b> (which in part explains their support for the fascist 
coup). After the election of the Popular Front, years of anarchist 
propaganda and organisation paid off with <i>"dramatic growth in rural 
anarcho-syndicalist support"</i> in the six weeks after the general election.
This <i>"was emphasised"</i> in the Aragn CNT's April congress's agenda
and it was decided to direct <i>"attention to rural problems"</i> while
the agreed programme was <i>"exactly what was to happen four months later 
in liberated Aragn."</i> In its aftermath, a series of intensive propaganda 
campaigns was organised through each of the provinces of the regional 
confederation. Many meetings were held in villages which had never before 
heard anarcho-syndicalist propaganda. This was very successful and by 
the beginning of June, 1936, the number of Aragn unions had topped 
400, compared to only 278 one month earlier. [Kesley, <i>"Anarchism in 
Aragn"</i>, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 75-76]
</p><p>
This increase in union membership reflected increased social struggle
by the Aragnese working population and their attempts to improve their
standard of living, which was very low for most of the population. A 
journalist from the conservative Catholic <b>Heraldo de Aragn</b> visited
lower Aragn in the summer of 1935 and noted <i>"[t]he hunger in many homes,
where the men are not working, is beginning to encourage the youth to
subscribe to misleading teachings."</i> [quoted by Kesley, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 74] Little wonder, then, the growth in CNT membership and social struggle
Kesley indicates: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Evidence of a different kind was also available that militant trade 
unionism in Aragn was on the increase. In the five months between 
mid-February and mid-July 1936 the province of Zaragoza experienced 
over seventy strikes, more than had previously been recorded in any 
entire year, and things were clearly no different in the other two 
provinces . . . the great majority of these strikes were occurring in 
provincial towns and villages. Strikes racked the provinces and in at 
least three instances were actually transformed into general strikes."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 76]
</blockquote></p><p>
So in the spring and summer of 1936 there was a massive growth in
CNT membership which reflected the growing militant struggle by the 
urban and rural population of Aragn. Years of propaganda and organising
had ensured this growth in libertarian influence, a growth which was 
reflected in the creation of collectives in liberated Aragn during the
revolution. Therefore, the construction of a collectivised society was 
founded directly upon the emergence, during the five years of the Second 
Republic, of a mass trade-union movement infused by anarchist principles. 
These collectives were constructed in accordance with the programme 
agreed at the Aragn CNT conference of April 1936 which reflected the 
wishes of the rural membership of the unions within Aragn (and due 
to the rapid growth of the CNT afterwards obviously reflected
popular feelings in the area):
</p><p>
<i>"libertarian dominance in post-insurrection Aragn itself reflected 
the predominance that anarchists had secured before the war; by the 
summer of 1936 the CNT had succeeded in establishing throughout Aragn 
a mass trade-union movement of strictly libertarian orientation, upon 
which widespread and well-supported network the extensive collective 
experiment was to be founded."</i> [Kesley, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 61]
</p><p>
Additional evidence that supports a high level of CNT support in
rural Aragn can be provided by the fact that it was Aragn that 
was the centre of the December 1933 insurrection organised by the 
CNT. As Bookchin noted, <i>"only Aragn rose on any significant 
scale, particularly Saragossa . . . many of the villages declared 
libertarian communism and perhaps the heaviest fighting took place 
between the vineyard workers in Rioja and the authorities"</i>. 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 238] It is unlikely for the CNT to organise an 
insurrection in an area within which it had little support or 
influence. According to Kesley, <i>"it was precisely those areas 
which had most important in December 1933"</i> which were in 1936 
<i>"seeking to create a new pattern of economic and social 
organisation, to form the basis of libertarian Aragn."</i> 
[<b>Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State</b>, 
p. 161] 
</p><p>
So the majority of collectives in Aragn were the product of CNT 
(and UGT) influenced workers taking the opportunity to create a 
new form of social life, a form marked by its voluntary and directly 
democratic nature. For from being unknown in rural Aragn, the CNT 
was well established and growing at a fast rate: <i>"Spreading out from 
its urban base . . . the CNT, first in 1933 and then more extensively 
in 1936, succeeded in converting an essentially urban organisation into 
a truly regional confederation."</i> [Kesley, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 184]
</p><p>
The evidence suggests that historians like Fraser are wrong to imply 
that the Aragn collectives were created by the CNT militia and enforced 
upon a unwilling population. The Aragn collectives were the natural
result of years of anarchist activity within rural Aragn and directly
related to the massive growth in the CNT between 1930 and 1936. Thus
Kesley is correct to state that libertarian communism and agrarian 
collectivisation <i>"were not economic terms or social principles 
enforced upon a hostile population by special teams of urban 
anarchosyndicalists."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 161] This is not 
to suggest that there were <b>no</b> examples of people joining 
collectives involuntarily because of the <i>"coercive climate"</i> 
of the front line nor that there were villages which did not have 
a CNT union within them before the war and so created a collective 
because of the existence of the CNT militia. It is to suggest that 
these can be considered as exceptions to the rule.
</p><p>
Moreover, the way the CNT handled such a situation is noteworthy. Fraser 
indicates such a situation in the village of Alloza. In the autumn of 
1936, representatives of the CNT district committee had come to suggest 
that the villagers collectivise (we would like to stress here that the 
CNT militia which had passed through the village had made no attempt 
to create a collective there). A village assembly was called and the 
CNT members explained their ideas and suggested how to organise the 
collective. However, who would join and how the villagers would 
organise the collective was left totally up to them (the CNT 
representatives <i>"stressed that no one was to be maltreated"</i>). 
Within the collective, self-management was the rule and one member 
recalled that <i>"[o]nce the work groups were established on a friendly 
basis and worked their own lands, everyone got on well enough."</i> 
<i>"There was no need for coercion, no need for discipline and punishment 
. . . A collective wasn't a bad idea at all."</i> [Fraser, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 360] This collective, like the vast majority, was voluntary and 
democratic: <i>"I couldn't oblige him to join; we weren't living 
under a dictatorship."</i> [quoted by Fraser, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 362] 
In other words, <b>no</b> force was used to create the collective and 
the collective was organised by local people directly.
</p><p>
Of course, as with any public good (to use economic jargon), all members of 
the community had to pay for the war effort and feed the militia. As Kelsey 
notes, <i>"[t]he military insurrection had come at a critical moment in the 
agricultural calendar. Throughout lower Aragn there were fields of grain 
ready for harvesting . . . At the assembly in Albalate de Cinca the opening 
clause of the agreed programme had required everyone in the district, 
independent farmers and collectivists alike, to contribute equally to 
the war effort, thereby emphasising one of the most important considerations 
in the period immediately following the rebellion."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 164]
In addition, the collectives controlled the price of crops in order to ensure 
that speculation and inflation were controlled. However, these policies
as with the equal duties of individualists and collectivists in the war
effort were enforced upon the collectives by the war.
</p><p>
Lastly, in support of the popular nature of the rural collectives, we 
will indicate the effects of the suppression of the collectives in August 
1937 by the Communists, namely the collapse of the rural economy. This
sheds considerable light on the question of popular attitudes. 
</p><p>
In October 1937, the Communist-controlled Regional Delegation of Agrarian 
Reform acknowledged that <i>"in the majority of villages agricultural 
work was paralysed causing great harm to our agrarian economy."</i> 
This is confirmed by Jose Silva, a Communist Party member and general
secretary of the Institute of Agrarian Reform, who commented that
after Lister had attacked Aragn, <i>"labour in the fields was
suspended almost entirely, and a quarter of the land had not
been prepared at the time for sowing."</i> At a meeting of the 
agrarian commission of the Aragnese Communist Party (October 9th, 
1937), Silva emphasised <i>"the little incentive to work of 
the entire peasant population"</i> and that the situation brought 
about by the dissolution of the collectives was <i>"grave and 
critical."</i> [quoted by Bolloten, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 530] 
Jose Peirats explained the reasons for this economic collapse 
as a result of popular boycott: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"When it came time to prepare for the next harvest, smallholders could 
not by themselves work the property on which they had been installed 
[by the communists]. Dispossessed peasants, intransigent collectivists, 
refused to work in a system of private property, and were even less 
willing to rent out their labour."</i> [<b>Anarchists in the Spanish 
Revolution</b>, p. 258]
</blockquote></p><p>
If the collectives were unpopular, created by anarchist force, then why did 
the economy collapse after the suppression? If Lister had overturned a
totalitarian anarchist regime, why did the peasants not reap the benefit of 
their toil? Could it be because the collectives were essentially a 
spontaneous Aragnese development and supported by most of the population
there? This analysis is supported by historian Yaacov Oved: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Those who were responsible for this policy [of attacking the Aragn
collectives], were convinced that the farmers would greet it joyfully
because they had been coerced into joining the collectives. But they were 
proven wrong. Except for the rich estate owners who were glad to get their 
land back, most of the members of the agricultural collectives objected 
and lacking all motivation they were reluctant to resume the same effort 
in the agricultural work. This phenomenon was so widespread that the 
authorities and the communist minister of agriculture were forced to 
retreat from their hostile policy."</i> [<b>"Communismo Libertario" and 
Communalism in the Spanish Collectivisations (1936-1939)</b>, pp. 53-4] 
</blockquote></p><p>
Even in the face of Communist repression, most of the collectives kept going. 
This, if nothing else, proves that the collectives were popular institutions.
<i>"Through the widespread reluctance of collectivists to co-operate with the 
new policy,"</i> Oved argues, <i>"it became evident that most members had 
voluntarily joined the collectives and as soon as the policy was changed a 
new wave of collectives was established. However, the wheel could not be 
turned back. An atmosphere of distrust prevailed between the collectives 
and the authorities and every initiative was curtailed"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 54]
</blockquote></p><p>
Jose Peirats summed up the situation after the communist attack on the 
collectives and the legalisation of the collectives as follows:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"It is very possible that this second phase of collectivisation better
reflects the sincere convictions of the members. They had undergone a
severe test and those who had withstood it were proven collectivists. Yet 
it would be facile to label as anti-collectivists those who abandoned
the collectives in this second phase. Fear, official coercion and
insecurity weighed heavily in the decisions of much of the Aragnese
peasantry."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 258]
</blockquote></p><p>
While the collectives had existed, there was a 20% increase in production 
(and this is compared to the pre-war harvest which had been <i>"a good crop"</i> 
[Fraser, <b>Op. Cit.</b>p. 370]). After the destruction of the collectives, 
the economy collapsed. Hardly the result that would be expected if the 
collectives were forced upon an unwilling peasantry (the forced 
collectivisation by Stalin in Russia resulted in a famine). Only the 
victory of fascism made it possible to restore the so-called "natural order" 
of capitalist property in the Spanish countryside. The same land-owners who 
welcomed the Communist repression of the collectives also, we are sure, 
welcomed the fascists who ensured a lasting victory of property over liberty.
</p><p>
So, overall, the evidence suggests that the Aragn collectives, like 
their counterparts in the Levante, Catalonia and so on, were <b>popular</b> 
organisations, created by and for the rural population and, essentially, 
an expression of a spontaneous and popular social revolution. Claims that 
the anarchist militia created them by force of arms are <b>false.</b> While acts 
of violence <b>did</b> occur and some acts of coercion <b>did</b> take place 
(against CNT policy, we may add) these were the exceptions to the rule. 
Bolloten's summary best fits the facts:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"But in spite of the cleavages between doctrine and practice that plagued
the Spanish Anarchists whenever they collided with the realities of power,
it cannot be overemphasised that notwithstanding the many instances of
coercion and violence, the revolution of July 1936 distinguished itself
from all others by the generally spontaneous and far-reaching character of
its collectivist movement and by its promise of moral and spiritual
renewal. Nothing like this spontaneous movement had ever occurred before."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 78]
</blockquote></p>

<a name="seci88"><h2>I.8.8 But did the Spanish collectives innovate?</h2></a>

<p>
Yes. In contradiction to the old capitalist claim that no one will 
innovate unless private property exists, the workers and peasants exhibited 
much more incentive and creativity under libertarian socialism than they 
had under the private enterprise system. This is apparent from Gaston
Leval's description of the results of collectivisation in Cargagente in
the southern part of the province of Valencia: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The climate of the region is particularly suited for the cultivation of
oranges . . . All of the socialised land, without exception, is cultivated
with infinite care. The orchards are thoroughly weeded. To assure that
the trees will get all the nourishment needed, the peasants are
incessantly cleaning the soil. 'Before,' they told me with pride, 'all
this belonged to the rich and was worked by miserably paid labourers. The
land was neglected and the owners had to buy immense quantities of
chemical fertilisers, although they could have gotten much better yields
by cleaning the soil . . .' With pride, they showed me trees that had
been grafted to produce better fruit.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In many places I observed plants growing in the shade of the orange
trees. 'What is this?,' I asked. I learned that the Levant peasants
(famous for their ingenuity) have abundantly planted potatoes among the
orange groves. The peasants demonstrate more intelligence than all the
bureaucrats in the Ministry of Agriculture combined. They do more than
just plant potatoes. Throughout the whole region of the Levant, wherever
the soil is suitable, they grow crops. They take advantage of the four
month [fallow period] in the rice fields. Had the Minister of Agriculture
followed the example of these peasants throughout the Republican zone, the
bread shortage problem would have been overcome in a few months."</i> 
[<b>Anarchist Collectives</b>, p. 153]
</blockquote></p><p>
This is just one from a multitude of examples presented in the accounts 
of both the industrial and rural collectives. We have already noted some 
examples of the improvements in efficiency realised by collectivisation 
during the Spanish Revolution (<a href="secI4.html#seci410">section I.4.10</a>). 
Another example was the baking industry. Souchy reported that, <i>"[a]s in the
rest of Spain, Barcelona's bread and cakes were baked mostly at night in
hundreds of small bakeries. Most of them were in damp, gloomy cellars
infested with roaches and rodents. All these bakeries were shut down. 
More and better bread and cake were baked in new bakeries equipped with
new modern ovens and other equipment."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 82] In
Granollers, the syndicate <i>"was at all times a prime-mover. All kinds
of initiatives tending to improve the operation and structure of the 
local economy could be attributed to it."</i> The collectivised 
hairdressing, shoe-making, wood-working and engineering industries
were all improved, with small, unhealthy and inefficient workplaces
closed and replaced by larger, more pleasant and efficient establishments.
<i>"Socialisation went hand in hand with rationalisation."</i> 
[Gaston Leval, <b>Collectives in the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 287] 
For more see <a href="secI8.html#seci86"> sectionI.8.6</a> as well as
<a href="secC2.html#secc28">section C.2.8</a> (in which we present 
more examples when refuting the charge that workers' control would 
stifle innovation). 
</p><p>
The substantial evidence available, of which these examples are but
a small number, proves that the membership of the collectives showed 
a keen awareness of the importance of investment and innovation in 
order to increase production, to make work both lighter and 
more interesting <b>and</b> that the collectives allowed that 
awareness to be expressed freely. The collectives indicate that, 
given the chance, everyone will take an interest in their own 
affairs and express a desire to use their minds to improve their 
lives and surroundings. In fact, capitalism distorts what innovation 
exists under hierarchy by channelling it purely into how to save money 
and maximise investor profit, ignoring other, more important, issues. As 
Gaston Leval suggested, self-management encouraged innovation:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The theoreticians and partisans of the liberal economy affirm that 
competition stimulates initiative and, consequently, the creative spirit
and invention without which it remains dormant. Numerous observations made
by the writer in the Collectives, factories and socialised workshops permit
him to take quite the opposite view. For in a Collective, in a grouping 
where each individual is stimulated by the wish to be of service to his
fellow beings, research, the desire for technical perfection and so on 
are also stimulated. But they also have as a consequence that other
individuals join those who were first to get together. Furthermore, when,
in present society, an individualist inventor discovers something, it is
used only by the capitalist or the individual employing him, whereas in 
the case of an inventor living in a community not only is his discovery 
taken up and developed by others, but is immediately applied for the 
common good. I am convinced that this superiority would very soon manifest
itself in a socialised society."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 347]
</blockquote></p><p>
Therefore the actual experiences of self-management in Spain supports the 
points made in 
<a href="secI4.html#seci411">section I.4.11</a>. 
Freed from hierarchy, individuals will 
creatively interact with the world to improve their circumstances. For 
the human mind is an active agent and unless crushed by authority it 
can no more stop thinking and acting than the Earth can stop revolving 
round the Sun. In addition, the Collectives indicate that self-management 
allows ideas to be enriched by discussion.
</p><p>
The experience of self-management proved Bakunin's point that society is 
collectively more intelligent than even the most intelligent individual 
simply because of the wealth of viewpoints, experience and thoughts contained 
there. Capitalism impoverishes individuals and society by its artificial 
boundaries and authority structures.
</p>

<a name="seci89"><h2>I.8.9 Why, if it was so good, did it not survive?</h2></a>

<p>
Just because something is good does not mean that it will survive. For 
example, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis failed but that
does not mean that the uprising was a bad cause or that the Nazi regime 
was correct, far from it. Similarly, while the experiments in workers'
self-management and free communes undertaken across Republican Spain 
is one of the most important social experiments in a free society ever
undertaken, this cannot change the fact that Franco's forces and the 
Communists had access to more and better weapons. 
</p><p>
Faced with the aggression and terrorism of Franco, and behind him the 
military might of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, the treachery of the 
Communists, and the aloofness of the Western "democratic" states 
(whose policy of "non-intervention" was strangely ignored when their 
citizens aided Franco) it is amazing the revolution lasted as long as 
it did.
</p><p>
This does not excuse the actions of the anarchists themselves. As is well
known, the CNT co-operated with the other anti-fascist parties and trade
unions on the Republican side ultimately leading to anarchists joining the 
government (see 
<a href="secI8.html#seci810">next section</a>). 
This co-operation helped ensure the defeat of the revolution. 
While much of the blame can be placed at
the door of the would-be "leaders" (who like most leaders started to
think themselves irreplaceable), it must be stated that the rank-and-file 
of the movement did little to stop them. Most of the militant anarchists were 
at the front-line (and so excluded from union and collective meetings)
and so could not influence their fellow workers (it is no surprise that
the radical <i>"Friends of Durruti"</i> anarchist group were mostly 
ex-militia men). However, it seems that the mirage of anti-fascist unity 
proved too much for the majority of CNT members (see 
<a href="secI8.html#seci812">section I.8.12</a>). 
</p><p>
A few anarchists still maintain that the Spanish anarchist movement 
had no choice and that collaboration (while having unfortunate 
effects) was the only choice available. This view was defended 
by Sam Dolgoff and finds some support in the writings of Gaston 
Leval, August Souchy and other participants in the revolution. 
However, most anarchists today oppose collaboration and think it 
was a terrible mistake (at the time, this position was held by the 
majority of non-Spanish anarchists plus a large minority of the 
Spanish movement, becoming a majority as the implications of 
collaboration became clear). This viewpoint finds its best 
expression in Vernon Richard's <b>Lessons of the Spanish Revolution</b> 
and, in part, in such works as <b>Anarchists in the Spanish 
Revolution</b> by Jose Peirats, <b>Anarchist Organisation: The 
History of the FAI</b> by Juan Gomaz Casas and <b>Durruti in the
Spanish Revolution</b> by Abel Paz as well as in a host 
of pamphlets and articles written by anarchists ever since.
</p><p>
So, regardless of how good a social system is, objective facts will 
overcome that experiment. Saturnino Carod (a leader of a CNT Militia 
column at the Aragn Front) summed up the successes of the revolution 
as well as its objective limitations:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Always expecting to be stabbed in the back, always knowing that 
if we created problems, only the enemy across the lines would 
stand to gain. It was a tragedy for the anarcho-syndicalist 
movement; but it was a tragedy for something greater -- the 
Spanish people. 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 and later joined 
the army. Without their creative endeavour, the republic
could not have fought the war . . ."</i> [quoted by Ronald Fraser, 
<b>Blood of Spain</b>, p. 394]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
So, regardless of its benefits, regardless of its increase in
liberty and equality, the revolution was defeated. This should
not blind us to its achievements or the potential it expressed.
Rather, it should be used both as a source of inspiration and
lessons. 
</p>

<a name="seci810"><h2>I.8.10 Why did the CNT collaborate with the state?</h2></a>

<p>
As is well know, in September 1936 the CNT joined the Catalan government, 
followed by the central government in November. This flowed from the 
decision made on July 21st to not speak of Libertarian Communism
until after Franco had been defeated. In other words, to collaborate 
with other anti-fascist parties and unions in a common front against 
fascism. This decision, initially, involved the CNT agreeing to join a 
<i>"Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias"</i> proposed by the 
leader of the Catalan government, Louis Companys. This committee was 
made up of representatives of various anti-fascist parties and groups. 
From this it was only a matter of time until the CNT joined an official 
government as no other means of co-ordinating activities existed (see 
<a href="secI8.html#seci813">section I.8.13</a>).
</p><p>
The question must arise, <b>why</b> did the CNT decide to collaborate 
with the state, forsake its principles and, in its own way, contribute 
to the counter-revolution and the loosing of the war. This is an 
important question. Indeed, it is one Marxists always throw up in 
arguments with anarchists or in anti-anarchist diatribes. Does the
failure of the CNT to implement anarchism after July 19th mean that 
anarchist politics are flawed? Or, rather, does the experience of 
the CNT and FAI during the Spanish revolution indicate a failure of
<b>anarchists</b> rather than of <b>anarchism,</b> a mistake made 
under difficult objective circumstances and one which anarchists have 
learnt from? Needless to say, anarchists argue that the latter is  
correct. In other words, as Vernon Richards argued, <i>"the basis of 
[this] criticism is not that anarchist ideas were proved to be 
unworkable by the Spanish experience, but that the Spanish anarchists
and syndicalists failed to put their theories to the test, adopting 
instead the tactics of the enemy."</i> [<b>Lessons of the Spanish 
Revolution</b>, p. 14] 
</p><p>
So, why <b>did</b> the CNT collaborate with the state
during the Spanish Civil War? Simply put, rather than
being the fault of anarchist theory (as Marxists like
to claim), its roots can be discovered in the situation
facing the Catalan anarchists on July 20th. The objective
conditions facing the leading militants of the CNT and
FAI influenced the decisions they took, decisions which
they later justified by <b>mis</b>-using anarchist theory.
</p><p>
What was the situation facing the Catalan anarchists
on July 20th? Simply put, it was an unknown situation, as 
the report made by the CNT to the <b>International Workers 
Association</b> made clear:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Levante was defenceless and uncertain . . . We were
in a minority in Madrid. The situation in Andalusia was 
unknown . . . There was no information from the North, and 
we assumed the rest of Spain was in the hands of the fascists. 
The enemy was in Aragn, at the gates of Catalonia. The 
nervousness of foreign consular officials led to the presence 
of a great number of war ships around our ports."</i> [quoted by
Jose Peirats, <b>Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 180]
</blockquote></p><p>
Anarchist historian Jose Peirats noted that according to the report
<i>"the CNT was in absolute control of Catalonia in July 19, 1936, 
but its strength was less in Levante and still less in central 
Spain where the central government and the traditional parties were 
dominant. In the north of Spain the situation was confused. The CNT 
could have mounted an insurrection on its own 'with probable
success' but such a take-over would have led to a struggle on three 
fronts: against the fascists, the government and foreign capitalism. 
In view of the difficulty of such an undertaking, collaboration
with other antifascist groups was the only alternative."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 179] In the words of the CNT report itself:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The CNT showed a conscientious scrupulousness in the face of a 
difficult alternative: to destroy completely the State in Catalonia, 
to declare war against the Rebels [i.e. the fascists], the government, 
foreign capitalism, and thus assuming complete control of Catalan society;
or collaborating in the responsibilities of government with the other 
antifascist fractions."</i> [quoted by Robert Alexander, <b>The 
Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War</b>, vol. 2, p. 1156]
</blockquote></p><p>
Moreover, as Gaston Leval later argued, given that the <i>"general 
preoccupation"</i> of the majority of the population was <i>"to 
defeat the fascists . . . the anarchists would, if they came out 
against the state, provoke the antagonism . . . of the majority of 
the people, who would accuse them of collaborating with Franco."</i> 
Implementing an anarchist revolution would, in all likelihood, also 
result in <i>"the instant closing of the frontier and the blockade 
by sea by both fascists and the democratic countries. The supply of 
arms would be completely cut off, and the anarchists would rightly 
be held responsible for the disastrous consequences."</i> [<b>The 
Anarchist Collectives</b>, p. 52 and p. 53]
</p><p>
While the supporters of Lenin and Trotsky will constantly
point out the objective circumstances in which their
heroes made their decisions during the Russian Revolution, 
they rarely mention those facing the anarchists in Spain on 
the 20th of July, 1936. It seems hypocritical to point to the 
Russian Civil War as the explanation of all of the Bolsheviks' 
crimes against the working class (indeed, humanity) while 
remaining silent on the forces facing the CNT-FAI at 
the start of the Spanish Civil War. The fact that <b>if</b> the
CNT had decided to implement libertarian communism in 
Catalonia they would have to face the fascists (commanding
the bulk of the Spanish army), the Republican government
(commanding the rest) <b>plus</b> those sections in Catalonia
which supported the republic is rarely mentioned. Moreover, when
the decision to collaborate was made it was <b>immediately
after the defeat of the army uprising in Barcelona</b> -- the
situation in the rest of the country was uncertain and when the 
social revolution was in its early days. Stuart Christie indicates 
the dilemma facing the leadership of the CNT at the time:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The higher committees of the CNT-FAI-FIJL in Catalonia
saw themselves caught on the horns of a dilemma: social
revolution, fascism or bourgeois democracy. Either they
committed themselves to the solutions offered by social
revolution, regardless of the difficulties involved in
fighting both fascism and international capitalism, or,
through fear of fascism (or of the people), they
sacrificed their anarchist principles and revolutionary
objectives to bolster, to become, part of the bourgeois
state . . . Faced with an imperfect state of affairs
and preferring defeat to a possibly Pyrrhic victory,
the Catalan anarchist leadership renounced anarchism
in the name of expediency and removed the social
transformation of Spain from their agenda.</i>
</blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"But what the CNT-FAI leaders failed to grasp was
that the decision whether or not to implement 
Libertarian Communism, was not theirs to make.
Anarchism was not something which could be transformed
from theory into practice by organisational decree
 . . . [the] spontaneous defensive movement of 19
July had developed a political direct of its own."</i> 
[<b>We, the Anarchists!</b>, p. 99]
</blockquote></p><p>
Given that the pro-fascist army still controlled a third
or more of Spain (including Aragn) and that the CNT was 
not the dominant force in the centre and north of Spain, 
it was decided that a war on three fronts would only aid 
Franco. Moreover, it was a distinct possibility that by
introducing libertarian communism in Catalonia, Aragn
and elsewhere, the workers' militias and self-managed
industries would have been starved of weapons, resources
and credit. That isolation was a real problem can be seen 
from Abad de Santilln's later comments on why the CNT joined 
the government:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The Militias Committee guaranteed the supremacy of the
people in arms . . . but we were told and it was 
repeated to us endlessly that as long as we persisted
in retaining it, that is, as long as we persisted in
propping up the power of the people, weapons would
not come to Catalonia, nor would we be granted the 
foreign currency to obtain them from abroad, nor
would we be supplied with the raw materials for our 
industry. And since losing the war meant losing 
everything and returning to a state like that
prevailed in the Spain of Ferdinand VII, and in
the conviction that the drive given by us and our 
people could not vanish completely from the new
economic life, we quit the Militias Committee to
join the Generalidad government."</i> [quoted by
Christie, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 109]
</blockquote></p><p>
It was decided to collaborate and reject the basic ideas 
of anarchism until the war was over. A terrible mistake,
but one which can be understood given the circumstances
in which it was made. This is not, we stress, to justify
the decision but rather to explain it and place it in
context. Ultimately, the <b>experience</b> of the Civil War
saw a blockade of Republic by both "democratic" and 
fascist governments, the starving of the militias and
self-managed collectives of resources and credit as well 
as a war on two fronts when the State felt strong enough 
to try and crush the CNT and the semi-revolution its members 
had started. Most CNT members did not think that when faced 
with the danger of fascism, the liberals, the right-wing 
socialists and communists would prefer to undermine 
the anti-fascist struggle by attacking the CNT. They were
wrong and, in this, history proved Durruti totally correct:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"For us it is a matter of crushing Fascism once and for all. Yes, 
and in spite of the Government. 
</p><p>
"No government in the world fights Fascism to the death. When the 
bourgeoisie sees power slipping from its grasp, it has recourse to
Fascism to maintain itself. The liberal government of Spain could 
have rendered the fascist elements powerless long ago. Instead it
compromised and dallied. Even now at this moment, there are men in 
this Government who want to go easy on the rebels. You can never tell, 
you know -- he laughed -- the present Government might yet need these 
rebellious forces to crush the workers' movement . . .
</p><p>
"We know what we want. To us it means nothing that there is a Soviet 
Union somewhere in the world, for the sake of whose peace and
tranquillity the workers of Germany and China were sacrificed to 
Fascist barbarians by Stalin. We want revolution here in Spain, right
now, not maybe after the next European war. We are giving Hitler and 
Mussolini far more worry to-day with our revolution than the whole 
Red Army of Russia. We are setting an example to the German and 
Italian working class on how to deal with fascism.
</p><p>
"I do not expect any help for a libertarian revolution from any 
Government in the world. Maybe the conflicting interests of the 
various imperialisms might have some influence in our struggle.
That is quite possible . . . But we expect no help, not even from 
our own Government, in the last analysis."</i> 
</p><p>
<i>"You will be sitting on a pile of ruins if you are victorious,"</i> 
said [the journalist] van Paasen.
</p><p>
Durruti answered: <i>"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."</i> [quoted by Vernon
Richards, <b>Lessons of the Spanish Revolution</b>, pp. 193-4f]
</blockquote></p><p>
This desire to push the revolution further was not limited to Durruti, 
as can be seen from this communication from the Catalan CNT leadership 
in August 1936. It also expresses the fears driving the decisions 
which had been made:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Reports have also been received from other regions. There has been
some talk about the impatience of some comrades who wish to go
further than crushing fascism, but for the moment the situation in
Spain as a whole is extremely delicate. In revolutionary terms,
Catalonia is an oasis within Spain.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Obviously no one can foresee the changes which may follow the
civil war and the conquest of that part of Spain which is still
under the control of mutinous reactionaries."</i> [quoted by Jose
Peirats, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 151-2]
</blockquote></p><p>
Isolation, the uneven support for a libertarian revolution 
across Spain and the dangers of fascism were real problems, 
but they do not excuse the libertarian movement for its 
mistakes. The biggest of these mistakes was forgetting basic 
anarchist ideas and an anarchist approach to the problems facing 
the Spanish people. If these ideas had been applied in Spain, the 
outcome of the Civil War and Revolution could have been different. 
</p><p>
In summary, while the decision to collaborate is one
that can be understood (due to the circumstances under which 
it was made), it cannot be justified in terms of anarchist 
theory. Indeed, as we argue in the 
<a href="secI8.html#seci811">next section</a>, attempts 
by the CNT leadership to justify the decision in terms of 
anarchist principles are not convincing and cannot be done 
without making a mockery of anarchism.
</p>

<a name="seci811"><h2>I.8.11 Was the decision to collaborate a product of anarchist theory?</h2></a>

<p>
Marxist critics of Anarchism point to CNT's decision to collaborate with
the bourgeois state against Franco as the key proof that libertarian 
socialism is flawed. Such a claim, anarchists reply, is false for rather 
than being the product of anarchist ideology, the decision was made 
in light of the immediate danger of fascism and the situation in 
other parts of the country. The fact is that the circumstances in which 
the decision to collaborate was made are rarely mentioned by Marxists. 
To quote a sadly typical Marxist diatribe:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"This question of state power, and which class holds it, was to 
prove crucial for revolutionaries during the Spanish Civil War and 
in particular during the revolutionary upheavals in Catalonia. Here 
anarchism faced its greatest test and greatest opportunity, yet it 
failed the former and therefore missed the latter.</i></blockquote> 
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"When the government in the region under the leadership of Companys 
admitted its impotence and offered to dissolve, effectively handing 
power to the revolutionary forces, the anarchists turned them down. 
CNT leader and FAI . . . militant Garcia Oliver explained, 'The 
CNT and the FAI decided on collaboration and democracy, renouncing 
revolutionary totalitarianism which would lead to the strangulation 
of the revolution by the anarchist and Confederal dictatorship. We 
had to choose, between Libertarian Communism, which meant anarchist 
dictatorship, and democracy, which meant collaboration.' The choice 
was between leaving the state intact and paving the way for Franco's 
victory or building a workers' government in Catalonia which could 
act as a focal point for the defeat of Franco and the creation of 
the structures of a new workers' state. In choosing the former the 
anarchists were refusing to distinguish between a capitalist 
state and a workers' state . . . The movement that started 
by refusing to build a workers' state ended up by recognising a 
capitalist one and betraying the revolution in the process."</i> 
[Pat Stack, <i>"Anarchy in the UK?"</i>, <b>Socialist Review</b>, 
no. 246]
</blockquote></p><p>
There are four key flaws in this kind of argument. First, there is the 
actual objective situation in which the decision to collaborate was 
made in. Strangely, for all his talk of anarchists ignoring <i>"material 
conditions"</i> when we discuss the Russian revolution, Stack fails to 
mention any when he discusses Spain. As such, his critique is pure 
idealism, without any attempt to ground it in the objective 
circumstances facing the CNT and FAI. Second, the quote provided 
as the only evidence for Stack's analysis dates from a year 
<b>after</b> the decision was made. Rather than reflect the actual 
concerns of the CNT and FAI at the time, they reflect the attempts
of the leaders of an organisation which had significantly departed
from its libertarian principles to justify their actions. While this
obviously suits Stack's idealist analysis of events, its use is
flawed for that reason. Thirdly, clearly the decision of the CNT and
FAI <b>ignored</b> anarchist theory. As such, it seems ironic to blame
anarchism when anarchists ignores its recommendations, yet this is
what Stack does. Lastly, there is the counter-example of Aragn,
which clearly refutes Stack's case. 
</p><p>
To understand why the CNT and FAI made the decisions it did, it is
necessary to do what Stack fails to do, namely to provide some
context. The decision to ignore anarchist theory, ignore the state
rather than smashing it and work with other anti-fascist organisations
was made immediately after the army had been defeated on the streets
of Barcelona on the 20th of July, 1936. As we indicated in the 
<a href="secI8.html#seci810">last section</a>, the decision of the 
CNT to collaborate with the state was driven by the fear of isolation.
The possibility that by declaring libertarian communism it would 
have had to fight the Republican government and foreign interventions 
<b>as well as</b> the military coup influenced the decision reached by 
the militants of Catalan anarchism. They concluded that pursuing 
implementing anarchism in the situation they faced would only aid 
Franco and result in a quick defeat.
</p><p>
As such, the <b>real</b> choice facing the CNT was not <i>"between leaving 
the state intact . . . or building a workers' government in Catalonia 
which could act as a focal point for the defeat of Franco"</i> but rather 
something drastically different: Either work with other anti-fascists 
against Franco so ensuring unity against the common enemy and pursue 
anarchism after victory <b>or</b> immediately implement libertarian 
communism and possibly face a conflict on two fronts, against Franco 
<b>and</b> the Republic (and, possibly, imperialist intervention against 
the social revolution). This situation made the CNT-FAI decided to
collaborate with other anti-fascist groups in the Catalan <b>Central 
Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias</b>. To downplay these objective 
factors and the dilemma they provoked and instead simply blame the 
decision on anarchist politics is a joke. 
</p><p>
Similarly, the Garcia Oliver quote provided by Stack dated from July 1937.
They were made as justifications of CNT-FAI actions and were designed for 
political effect. As such, they simply cannot be taken at face value for 
these two reasons. It is significant, though, that rather than discuss the
actual problems facing the CNT Marxists like Stack prefer to ritualistically 
trot out a quote made over a year later. They argue that it exposes the 
bankruptcy of anarchist theory. So convinced of this, they rarely bother 
discussing the problems facing the CNT after the defeat of the military coup
nor do they compare these quotes to the anarchist theory they claim inspired 
them. 
</p><p>
There are good reasons for this. Firstly, if they presented the objective
circumstances the CNT found itself it then their readers may see that the 
decision, while wrong, is understandable and had nothing to do with anarchist 
theory. Secondly, by comparing this quote to anarchist theory their readers 
would soon see how at odds they are with each other. Indeed, Garcia Oliver 
invoked anarchism to justify conclusions that were the exact <b>opposite</b> 
to what that theory actually recommends! 
</p><p>
So what can be made of Garcia Oliver's argument? As Abel Paz noted <i>"[i]t 
is clear that the explanations given . . . were designed for their political 
effect, hiding the atmosphere in which these decisions were taken. These 
declarations were made a year later when the CNT were already far removed 
from their original positions It is also the period when they had become 
involved in the policy of collaboration which led to them taking part in 
the Central Government. But in a certain way they shed light on the unknown 
factors which weighted so heavily on these who took part in the historic 
Plenum."</i> [<b>Durruti: The People Armed</b>, p. 215]
</p><p>
For example, when the decision was made, the revolution had not started 
yet. The street fighting had just ended and the Plenum decided <i>"not 
to speak about Libertarian Communism as long as part of Spain was in 
the hands of the fascists."</i> [Mariano R. Vesquez, quoted by Paz, <b>Op.
Cit.</b>, p. 214] The revolution took place <b>from below</b> in
the days following the decision, independently of the
wishes of the Plenum. In the words of Abel Paz:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"When the workers reached their workplaces . . . they
found them deserted . . . The major centres of production
had been abandoned by their owners . . . The CNT and
its leaders had certainly not foreseen this situation; 
if they had, they would have given appropriate guidance 
to the workers when they called off the General Strike 
and ordered a return to work. What happened next
was the result of the workers' spontaneous decision to
take matters into their own hands.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Finding the factories deserted, and no instructions
from their unions, they resolved to operate the
machines themselves."</i> [<b>The Spanish Civil War</b>,
pp. 54-5]</blockquote>
</p><p>
The rank and file of the CNT, on their own initiative, 
took advantage of the collapse of state power to transform 
the economy and social life of Catalonia. Paz stressed
that <i>"no orders were given for expropriation or
collectivisation -- which proved that the union, which
represented the will of their members until July 18th, 
had now been overtaken by events"</i> and the <i>"union leaders 
of the CNT committees were confronted with a revolution 
that they had not foreseen . . . the workers and peasants 
had bypassed their leaders and taken collective action."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 40 and p. 56] As historian Ronald
summarises the <i>"revolutionary initiative had sprung not 
from the CNT's leading committees -- how could it when the 
libertarian revolution had been officially 'postponed'? -- 
but from individual CNT unions impelled by the most advanced 
syndicalist militants."</i> So while the Catalan CNT <i>"had 
'put off' libertarian revolution . . . daily, the revolution 
in Barcelona was taking root in CNT collectives and union-run 
industries."</i> [<b>Blood of Spain</b>, p. 139 and p. 179]
</p><p>
As the revolution had not yet begun and the CNT Plenum had 
decided <b>not</b> to call for its start, it is difficult to see 
how <i>"libertarian communism"</i> (i.e. the revolution) could 
<i>"lead to the strangulation of the revolution"</i> (i.e. 
libertarian communism). In other words, this particular
rationale put forward by Garcia Oliver could not reflect
the real thoughts of those present at the CNT plenum and
so, obviously, was a later justification for the CNT's actions.
Moreover, the decision made then clearly stated that Libertarian 
Communism would be back on the agenda once Franco was defeated. 
Oliver's comments were applicable <b>after</b> Franco was defeated 
just as much as on July 20th, 1936. 
</p><p>
Similarly, Libertarian Communism is based on self-management,
by its nature opposed to dictatorship. According to the 
CNT's resolution at its congress in Zaragoza in May,
1936, <i>"the foundation of this administration will be the 
Commune"</i> which is <i>"autonomous"</i> and <i>"federated at 
regional and national levels."</i> The commune <i>"will undertake 
to adhere to whatever general norms [that] may be agreed
by majority vote after free debate."</i> [quoted by Jose Peirats, 
<b>The CNT in the Spanish Revolution</b>, vol. 1, p. 106] It 
stressed the free nature of society aimed at by the CNT:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The inhabitants of a commune are to debate among themselves 
their internal problems . . . Federations are to deliberate 
over major problems affecting a country or province and all 
communes are to be represented at their reunions and assemblies, 
thereby enabling their delegates to convey the democratic 
viewpoint of their respective communes . . . every commune 
which is implicated will have its right to have its say . . . 
On matters of a regional nature, it is the duty of the regional 
federation to implement agreements . . . So the starting point 
is the individual, moving on through the commune, to the 
federation and right on up finally to the confederation."</i> 
[quoted by Peirats, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 107]
</blockquote></p><p>
Hardly a picture of <i>"anarchist dictatorship"</i>! Indeed, it
is far more democratic than the capitalist state Oliver
described as <i>"democracy."</i> So Oliver's arguments from 1937
are totally contradictory. After all, he is arguing that libertarian 
communism (a society based on self-managed free associations organised 
and run from the bottom up) is an <i>"anarchist dictatorship"</i> and 
<b>less</b> democratic than the capitalist Republic he had been fighting 
against between 1931 and 1936! Moreover, libertarian communism <b>inspired</b> 
the revolution and so to reject it in favour of capitalist democracy to stop 
<i>"the strangulation of the revolution"</i> makes no sense.
</p><p>
Clearly, these oft quoted words of Garcia Oliver cannot be 
taken at face value. Made in 1937, they present an attempt to 
misuse anarchist ideals to defend the anti-anarchist activities 
of the CNT leadership rather than a meaningful explanation of 
the decisions made on the 20th of July, 1936. It is safe to take 
his words with a large pinch of salt. To rely upon them for an 
analysis of the actions of the Spanish Anarchists or the failings 
of anarchism suggests an extremely superficial perspective. This 
is particularly the case when we look at both the history of the 
CNT and anarchist theory. 
</p><p>
This can clearly been seen from the report made by the CNT
to the <b>International Workers Association</b> to justify
the decision to forget anarchist theory and collaborate
with bourgeois parties and join the government. The 
report states that <i>"the CNT, loyal to its ideals and 
its purely anarchist nature, did not attack the forms 
of the State, nor try publicly to penetrate or dominate 
it . . . none of the political or juridical institutions 
were abolished."</i> [quoted by Robert Alexander, <b>The 
Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War</b>, vol. 2, p. 1156] 
In other words, according to this report, "anarchist" ideals 
do not, in fact, mean the destruction of the state, but 
rather the <b>ignoring</b> of the state. That this is nonsense, 
concocted to justify the CNT leaderships' betrayal of its 
ideals, is clear. To prove this we just need to look at Bakunin 
and Kropotkin and look at the activities of the CNT <b>before</b> 
the start of the war.
</p><p>
According to anarchist ideas, to quote Bakunin, <i>"the revolution 
must set out from the first to radically and totally destroy the 
State"</i> and that the <i>"natural and necessary consequence of 
this destruction"</i> will include the <i>"dissolution of army, 
magistracy, bureaucracy, police and priesthood"</i> as well as 
the <i>"confiscation of all productive capital and means of production 
on behalf of workers' associations, who are to put them to use"</i>. 
The state would be replaced by <i>"the federative Alliance of all 
working men's associations"</i> which <i>"will constitute the 
Commune."</i> These communes, in turn, would <i>"constitute the 
federation of insurgent associations . . . and organise a 
revolutionary force capable of defeating reaction."</i> [<b>Michael 
Bakunin: Selected Writings</b>, pp. 170-1] For Kropotkin, the 
<i>"Commune . . . must break the State and replace it by the 
Federation."</i> [<b>Words of a Rebel</b>, p. 83] 
</p><p>
Thus anarchism has always been clear on what to do with the state, 
and it is obviously not what the CNT did to it! The CNT ignored these 
recommendations and so given that it did <b>not</b> destroy the state, 
nor create a federation of workers' councils, then how can anarchist 
theory be blamed? It seems strange to point to the failure of anarchists 
to apply their politics as an example of the failure of those politics, 
yet this is what the likes of Stack are doing.
</p><p>
Nor had the CNT always taken this perspective. Before the start 
of the Civil War, the CNT had organised numerous insurrections 
against the state. For example, in the spontaneous revolt of 
CNT miners in January 1932, the workers <i>"seized town halls, 
raised the black-and-red flags of the CNT, and declared <b>communismo 
liberatario.</b>"</i> In Tarassa, the same year, the workers again 
<i>"seiz[ed] town halls"</i> and the town was <i>"swept by street 
fighting."</i> The revolt in January 1933 began with <i>"assaults 
by Anarchist action groups . . . on Barcelona's military barracks
. . . Serious fighting occurred in working-class <b>barrios</b> 
and the outlying areas of Barcelona . . . Uprising occurred in
Tarassa, Sardanola-Ripollet, Lerida, in several <b>pueblos</b> 
in Valencia province, and in Andalusia."</i> In December 1933,
the workers <i>"reared barricades, attacked public buildings,
and engaged in heavy street fighting . . . many villages
declared libertarian communism."</i> [Murray Bookchin, <b>The 
Spanish Anarchists</b>, p. 225, p. 226, p. 227 and p. 238]
</p><p>
It seems that the CNT leadership's loyalty to <i>"its ideals 
and its purely anarchist nature"</i> which necessitated <i>"not 
attack[ing] the forms of the State"</i> was a very recent 
development! 
</p><p>
As can be seen, the rationales later developed to justify the 
betrayal of anarchist ideas and the revolutionary workers of 
Spain have no real relationship to anarchist theory. They were 
created to justify a non-anarchist approach to the struggle 
against fascism, an approach based on ignoring struggle from 
below and instead forging alliances with parties and unions at 
the top. This had been not always been the case. Throughout 
the 1930s the UGT and Socialist Party had rejected the CNT's
repeated calls for a revolutionary alliance from below in 
favour of a top-down <i>"Workers' Alliance"</i> which, they 
believed, would be the only way which would allow them to 
control the labour movement. The CNT, rightly, rejected such 
a position in favour of an alliance from the bottom up yet, in 
July 1936, the need for unity was obvious and the UGT was 
not changing its position. So while in Barcelona the state 
has been destroyed in all but name, <i>"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."</i> [Abel Paz, <b>Durruti in the Spanish 
Revolution</b>, p. 462]
</p><p>
Rather than trying to cement a unity with other organisations
at the top level in July 1936, the leadership of the CNT should 
have applied their anarchist ideas by inciting the oppressed
to enlarge and consolidate their gains (which they did
anyway). This would have liberated all the potential
energy within the country (and elsewhere), energy that
clearly existed as can be seen from the spontaneous
collectivisations that occurred after the fateful Plenum
of July 20th and the creation of volunteer workers'
militia columns sent to liberate those parts of Spain
which had fallen to Franco. 
</p><p>
The role of anarchists, therefore, was that of <i>"inciting 
the people to abolish capitalistic property and the 
institutions through which it exercises its power for the 
exploitation of the majority by a minority"</i> and <i>"to 
support, to incite and encourage the development of the 
social revolution and to frustrate any attempts by the 
bourgeois capitalist state to reorganise itself, which 
it would seek to do."</i> This would involve <i>"seeking to
destroy bourgeois institutions through the creation of 
revolutionary organisms."</i> [Vernon Richards, <b>Lessons 
of the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 44, p. 46 and p. 193] 
In other words, to encourage, the kind of federation of
communities and workplaces Bakunin and Kropotkin had called 
for.
</p><p>
Indeed, such an organisation already existing in embryo in the 
CNT's <b>barrios</b> defence committees which had led and 
co-ordinated the struggle against the military coup throughout 
Barcelona. <i>"The Neighbourhood Committees, which had diverse 
names but all shared a libertarian outlook, federated and created 
a revolutionary Local Co-ordination Committee."</i> They <i>"became 
Revolutionary Committees and formed what was called the 'Federation 
of Barricades.' It was the Committees that held power in Barcelona 
that evening."</i> [Paz, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 470 and p. 445] Rather
than collaborate with political parties and the UGT at the top, in
the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, the CNT should have
developed these organs of community self-organisation:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Power lay in the street on July 20, represented by the people in 
arms . . . Life took on a new momentum and it both destroyed and
created as the people worked to resolve practical necessities born
from a collective life that lived -- and wanted to continue living
-- in the street . . . The street and the people in arms were the
living force of the revolution . . . The Defence Committees, now
transformed into Revolutionary Committees, back up this force. They
organised what was called the 'Federation of Barricades.' Militants,
standing resolutely behind these barricades, represented them in the
Revolutionary Committees."</i> [Paz, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 450-1]
</blockquote>
</p><p>
Later, a delegate meeting from the various workplaces (whether 
previously unionised or not) would have to had been arranged to 
organise, to re-quote Bakunin, <i>"the federal Alliance of all
working men's associations"</i> which would <i>"constitute the 
Commune"</i> and complement the <i>"federation of the barricades."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 170] In more modern terminology, a federation 
of workers' councils combined with a federation of workers' 
militias and community assemblies. Without this, the revolution 
was doomed as was the war against Franco. A minority of 
anarchists <b>did</b> see this genuinely libertarian solution 
at the time, but sadly they were a minority. For example, the 
members of the <b>Nosotros</b> Group, which included Durruti,
thought <i>"it was necessary to transcend the alliance between the
CNT and the political parties and create an authentic revolutionary
organisation. That organisation would rest directly on Barcelona's
and Catalonia's unions and Revolutionary Committees. Together, those
groups would form a Regional Assembly, which would be the revolution's
executive body."</i> [Paz, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 471] Such a development, 
applying the basic ideas of anarchism (and as expounded in the CNT's 
May resolution on Libertarian Communism), was not an impossibility. 
After all, as we will see, the CNT-FAI organised along those lines 
in Aragn. 
</p><p>
Concern that Catalonia would be isolated from the rest of the Republic 
was foremost in the minds of many in the CNT and FAI. The fear that if 
libertarian communism was implemented then a civil war within the 
anti-fascist forces would occur (so aiding Franco) was a real one. 
Unfortunately, the conclusion draw from that fear, namely to win the 
war against Franco before talking about the revolution, was the wrong 
one. After all, a civil war within the Republican side <b>did</b> occur, 
when the state had recovered enough to start it. Similarly, with the 
fear of a blockade by foreign governments. This happened away, confirming 
the analysis of activists like Durruti.
</p><p>
Organising a full and proper delegate meeting in the first days 
of the revolution would have allowed all arguments and suggestions 
to be discussed by the whole membership of the CNT and, perhaps, a 
different decision may have been reached on the subject of 
collaboration. After all, many CNT members were applying anarchist 
politics by fighting fascism via a revolutionary war. This can be 
seen by the rank and file of the CNT and FAI ignoring the decision 
to "postpone" the revolution in favour of an anti-fascist war. All 
across Republican Spain, workers and peasants started to expropriate 
capital and the land, placing it under workers' self-management. 
They did so on their own initiative. It is also possible, as 
discussed in the <a href="secI8.html#seci812">next section</a>, 
that anti-fascist unity would have prevailed and so the some 
decision would have been reached.
</p><p>
Be that as it may, by thinking they could postpone the revolution 
until after the war, the CNT leadership made two mistakes. Firstly, 
they should have known that their members would hardly miss this 
opportunity to implement libertarian ideas so making their decision 
redundant (and a statist backlash inevitable). Secondly, they 
abandoned their anarchist ideas, failing to understand that the 
struggle against fascism would never be effective without the active 
participation of the working class. Such participation could 
never be achieved by placing the war before the revolution
and by working in top-down, statist structures or within 
a state. 
</p><p>
Indeed, the mistake made by the CNT, while understandable, cannot 
be justified given that their consequences had been predicted by 
numerous anarchists beforehand, including Kropotkin. Decades 
earlier in an essay on the Paris Commune, the Russian anarchist
refuted the two assumptions of the CNT leadership -- first, of 
placing the war before the revolution and, second, that the 
struggle could be waged by authoritarian structures or a state.
He explicitly attacked the mentality and logic of those who 
argued <i>"Let us first make sure of victory, and then see what 
can be done"</i>:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Make sure of victory! As if there were any way of transforming 
society into a free commune without laying hands upon property! 
As if there were any way of defeating the enemy so long as the 
great mass of the people is not directly interested in the triumph 
of the revolution, in witnessing the arrival of material, moral 
and intellectual well-being for all! They sought to consolidate
the Commune first of all while postponing the social revolution
for later on, while the only effective way of proceeding was
<b>to consolidate the Commune by the social revolution</b>!"</i>
[<b>Words of a Rebel</b>, p. 97]
</blockquote></p><p>
Kropotkin's argument was sound, as the CNT discovered. By waiting
until victory in the war they were defeated (as Abel Paz suggested,
the workers of Spain <i>"had to build a new world to secure and 
defend their victory."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 451]). Kropotkin 
also indicated the inevitable effects of the CNT's actions in 
co-operating with the state and joining representative bodies:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Paris . . . sent her devoted sons to the Hotel-de-Ville 
[town hall]. Indeed, immobilised there by fetters of red tape,
forced to discuss when action was needed, and losing the 
sensitivity that comes from continual contact with the masses, 
they saw themselves reduced to impotence. Paralysed by their 
distancing from the revolutionary centre -- the people --
they themselves paralysed the popular initiative."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 97-8]
</blockquote></p><p>
Which, in a nutshell, was what happened to the leading militants of 
the CNT who collaborated with the state. Kropotkin was proved right, 
as was anarchist theory from Bakunin onwards. As Vernon Richards 
argued, <i>"there can be no excuse"</i> for the CNT's decision, 
as <i>"they were not mistakes of judgement but the deliberate 
abandonment of the principles of the CNT."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
pp. 41-2] It seems difficult to blame anarchist theory for the 
decisions of the CNT when that theory argues the opposite position.
That enemies of anarchism quote Garcia Oliver's words from 1937 to 
draw conclusions about anarchist theory says more about their politics 
than about anarchism!
</p><p>
Moreover, while the experience of Spain confirms anarchist theory
<b>negatively</b>, it also confirms it <b>positively</b> by the 
creation of the Regional Defence Council of Aragn. The Council of 
Aragn was created by a meeting of delegates from CNT unions, village 
collectives and militia columns to protect the new society based on
libertarian communism the people of Aragn were building. The 
meeting also decided to press for the setting up of a National 
Defence Committee which would link together a series of 
regional bodies that were organised on principles similar to the 
one now established in Aragn. Durruti stressed that the collectives
<i>"had to build their own means of self-defence and not rely on the 
libertarian columns which would leave Aragn as the war evolved. They 
needed to co-ordinate themselves, although he also warned themselves 
an anti-fascist political front like the type existing in other parts 
of Spain. They needn't make the same error as their compatriots 
elsewhere . . . The popular assembly must be sovereign."</i> After
a CNT regional assembly militants decided to <i>"form the Aragn 
Defence Council and the Aragn Federation of Collectives."</i>
[Paz, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 540-1] This exposes as false the claim 
that anarchism failed during the Spanish Civil War. In Aragn, the 
CNT <b>did</b> follow the ideas of anarchism, abolishing both the 
state and capitalism. If they had did this in Catalonia, the outcome 
of the Civil War may have been different.
</p><p>
The continuity of what happened in Aragn with the ideas of anarchism 
and the CNT's 1936 Zaragoza Resolution on Libertarian Communism is 
obvious. The formation of the Regional Defence Council was an 
affirmation of commitment to the principles of libertarian communism. 
This principled stand for revolutionary social and economic change 
stands at odds with the claims that the Spanish Civil War indicates 
the failure of anarchism. After all, in Aragn the CNT <b>did</b> 
act in accordance with anarchist theory as well as in its own history 
and politics. It created a federation of workers' associations as 
argued by Bakunin. To contrast Catalonia and Aragn shows the weakness 
of Stack's argument. The same organisation, with the same politics, 
yet different results. How can anarchist ideas be blamed for what 
happened in Catalonia when they had been applied in Aragn? Such a 
position could not be logically argued and, unsurprisingly, Aragn 
usually fails to get mentioned by Marxists when discussing Anarchism 
during the Spanish Civil War. 
</p><p>
Therefore, the activities of the CNT during the Civil War cannot 
be used to discredit anarchism although it can be used to show 
that anarchists, like everyone else, can and do make wrong decisions 
in difficult circumstances. That Marxists always point to this event 
in anarchist history is unsurprising, for it <b>was</b> a terrible 
mistake. Yet how could anarchism have "failed" during the Spanish
Revolution when it was ignored in Catalonia (for fear of fascism) 
and applied in Aragn? How can it be argued that anarchist politics 
were to blame when those very same politics had formed the Council 
of Aragn? It cannot. Simply put, the Spanish Civil War showed
the failure of certain anarchists to apply their ideas in a
difficult situation rather than the failure of anarchism. As 
Emma Goldman argued, the <i>"contention that there is
something wrong with Anarchism . . . because the leading
comrades in Spain failed Anarchism seems to be very faulty
reasoning . . . the failure of one or several individuals
can never take away from the depth and truth of an ideal."</i> 
[<b>Vision on Fire</b>, p. 299] 
</p><p>
To use the Catalan CNT to generalise about anarchism is false as 
it, firstly, requires a dismissal of the objective circumstances 
the decision was made in and, secondly, it means ignoring anarchist 
theory and history. It also gives the impression that anarchism as 
a revolutionary theory must be evaluated purely from one event in 
its history. The experiences of the Makhnovists in the Ukraine, the 
USI and UAI in the factory occupations of 1920 and fighting fascism 
in Italy, the insurrections of the CNT during the 1930s, the Council 
of Aragn created by the CNT in the Spanish Revolution and so on, 
are all ignored. Hardly convincing, although handy for Marxists. As 
is clear from, for example, the experiences of the Makhnovists and 
the Council of Aragn, that anarchism has been applied successfully 
on a large scale, both politically and economically, in revolutionary 
situations.
</p><p>
Equally flawed are any attempts to suggest that those anarchists
who remained true to libertarian theory somehow, by so doing,
rejected it and moved towards Marxism. This is usually done to the
anarchist group the <b>Friends of Durruti</b> (FoD). In the words 
of Pat Stack:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Interestingly the one Spanish anarchist group that developed the 
most sophisticated critique of all this was the Friends of Durutti 
[sic!]. As [Trotskyist] Felix Morrow points out, 'They represented 
a conscious break with the anti-statism of traditional anarchism. 
They explicitly declared the need for democratic organs of power, 
juntas or soviets, in the overthrow of capitalism, and the necessary 
state measures of repression against the counter-revolution.' The 
failure of the Spanish anarchists to understand exactly that these 
were the stark choices workers' power, or capitalist power followed 
by reaction."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>]
</blockquote></p><p>
That Stack could not bother to spell Durruti's name correctly shows how 
seriously we should take this analysis. The FoD were an anarchist 
grouping within the CNT and FAI which, like a large minority of 
others, strongly and consistently opposed the policy of 
anti-fascist unity. Rather than signify a <i>"conscious break"</i> 
with anarchism, it signified a conscious <b>return</b> to it. This can 
be clearly seen when we compare their arguments to those of Bakunin. As 
noted by Stack, the FoD argued for <i>"juntas"</i> in the overthrow of 
capitalism and to defend against counter-revolution. Yet this was 
<b>exactly</b> what revolutionary anarchists have argued for since 
Bakunin (see <a href="secH2.html#sech21">section H.2.1</a> for details). 
The continuity of the ideas of the FoD with the pre-Civil War politics 
of the CNT and the ideas of revolutionary anarchism are clear. As such, 
the FoD were simply arguing for a return to the traditional positions 
of anarchism and cannot be considered to have broken with it. If Stack 
or Morrow knew anything about anarchism, then they would have known 
this.
</p><p>
As such, the failure of the Spanish anarchists was not the <i>"stark
choice"</i> between <i>"workers' power"</i> and <i>"capitalist power"</i> 
but rather the making of the wrong choice in the real dilemma of 
introducing anarchism (which would, by definition, be based on workers' 
power, organisation and self-management) or collaborating with other 
anti-fascist groups in the struggle against the greater enemy of 
Franco (i.e. fascist reaction). That Stack does not see this
suggests that he simply has no appreciation of the dynamics of
the Spanish Revolution and prefers abstract sloganeering to a
serious analysis of the problems facing it. He ends by summarising:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The most important lesson . . . is that whatever ideals and gut 
instincts individual anarchists may have, anarchism, both in 
word and deed, fails to provide a roadworthy vehicle for human 
liberation. Only Marxism, which sees the centrality of the working 
class under the leadership of a political party, is capable of 
leading the working class to victory."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>]
</blockquote></p><p>
As a useful antidote to these claims, we need simply quote Trotsky 
on what the Spanish anarchists should have done. In his words: 
<i>"Because the leaders of the CNT renounced dictatorship <b>for 
themselves</b> they left the place open for the Stalinist dictatorship."</i> 
Hardly an example of "workers' power"! Or, as he put it earlier in the 
same year, a <i>"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."</i> Ultimately, it was the case that the failure of 
the Spanish Revolution confirmed for Trotsky the truism that the 
<i>"revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party . . . is an 
objective necessity . . . The revolutionary party (vanguard) which 
renounces <b>its own dictatorship</b> surrenders the masses to the 
counter-revolution."</i> Rather than seeing, as anarchist do, workers' 
councils as being key, Trotsky considered the party, in fact the 
<i>"dictatorship of a party"</i>, as being the decisive factor. 
[our emphasis, <b>Writings of Leon Trotsky 1936-37</b>, p. 514, 
p. 488 and pp. 513-4] At best, such organs would be used to achieve 
party power and would simply be a fig-leaf for its rule (see 
<a href="secH3.html#sech38">section H.3.8</a>).
</p><p>
Clearly, the leading Marxist at the time was not arguing for the
<i>"centrality of the working class under the leadership of a political
party."</i> He was arguing for the dictatorship of a "revolutionary"
party <i><b>over</b></i> the working class. Rather than the working class 
being "central" to the running of a revolutionary regime, Trotsky saw 
the party taking that position. What sort of <i>"victory"</i> is 
possible when the party has dictatorial power over the working class 
and the <i>"sovereign ruler"</i> of society? Simply the kind of 
"victory" that leads to Stalinism. Rather than seeing working class 
organisations as the means by which working people run society, Leninists 
see them purely in instrumental terms -- the means by which the party can 
seize power. As the Russian Revolution proved beyond doubt, in a conflict 
between workers' power and party power Leninists will suppress the former
to ensure the latter.
</p><p>
To paraphrase Stack, the most important lesson from both the Russian
and Spanish revolutions is that whatever ideals and gut instincts 
individual Leninists may have, Leninism, both in word and deed, fails 
to provide a roadworthy vehicle for human liberation. Only Anarchism, 
which sees the centrality of the working class self-management of the 
class struggle and revolution, is capable of ensuring the creation of a
real, free, socialist society. 
</p><p>
Lastly, it could be argued that our critique of the standard Leninist 
attack on Spanish anarchism is similar to that presented by Leninists 
to justify Bolshevik authoritarianism during the Russian Revolution. 
After all, Leninists like Stack point to the objective circumstances 
facing Lenin's regime -- its isolation, civil war and economic 
problems -- as explaining its repressive actions. Yet any similarity
is superficial as the defeat of the Revolution in Spain was due to 
anarchists <b>not</b> applying our ideas whole, while, in Russia, it was
due to the Bolsheviks <b>applying</b> their ideology. The difficulties
that faced the Russian Revolution pushed the Bolsheviks further down
the road they where already travelling down (not to mention that 
Bolshevik ideology significantly contributed to making many of these
problem worse). As we discuss in <a href="secH6.html">section H.6</a>,
the notion that "objective circumstances" explains Bolshevik tyranny is
simply unconvincing, particularly given the role Bolshevik ideology 
played in this process.
</p><p>
So, to conclude, rather than show the failure of anarchism, the 
experience of the Spanish Revolution indicates the failure of 
anarchists to apply their ideas in practice. Faced with extremely
difficult circumstances, they compromised their ideas in the name 
of anti-fascist unity. Their compromises <b>confirmed</b> rather 
than refuted anarchist theory as they led to the defeat of both 
the revolution <b>and</b> the civil war.
</p>

<a name="seci812"><h2>I.8.12 Was the decision to collaborate imposed on the CNT's membership?</h2></a>

<p>
A few words have to be said about the development of the CNT and 
FAI after the 19th of July, 1936. It is clear that both changed 
in nature and were the not same organisations as they were 
<b>before</b> that date. Both organisations became more
centralised and bureaucratic, with the membership excluded 
from many major decisions. As Peirats suggested: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In the CNT and among militant anarchists there had been a
tradition of the most scrupulous respect for the deliberations
and decisions of the assemblies, the grassroots of the
federalist organisation. Those who held administrative
office had been merely the mandatories of those decisions.
The regular motions adopted by the National congresses
spelled out to the Confederation and its representative 
committees ineluctable obligations of a basic and general 
nature incumbent upon very affiliated member regardless of 
locality or region. And the forming of such general motions 
was the direct responsibility of all of the unions by means of 
motions adopted at their respective general assemblies. Similarly, 
the Regional or Local Congresses would establish the guidelines 
of requirement and problems that obtained only at regional or 
local levels. In both instances, sovereignty resided always 
with the assemblies of workers whether in their unions or 
in their groups.</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"This sense of rigorous, everyday federalist procedure was abruptly 
amended from the very outset of the revolutionary phase. . . This
amendment of the norms of the organisation was explained away by 
reference to the exceptional turn of events, which required a greater 
agility of decisions and resolutions, which is to say a necessary 
departure from the circuitous procedures of federalist practice 
which operated from the bottom upwards."</i> [<b>The CNT in the Spanish 
Revolution</b>, vol. 1, p. 213] 
</blockquote></p><p>
In other words, the CNT had become increasingly hierarchical, 
with the higher committees becoming transformed into executive 
bodies rather than administrative ones as <i>"it is safe to assert 
that the significant resolutions in the organisation were
adopted by the committees, very rarely by the mass constituency.
Certainly, circumstances required quick decisions from the
organisation, and it was necessary to take precautions to
prevent damaging leaks. These necessities tempted the committees
to abandon the federalist procedures of the organisation."</i> 
[Jose Peirats, <b>Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 188]
</p><p>
Ironically, rather than the <i>"anarchist leaders"</i> of the CNT 
failing to <i>"seize power"</i> as Trotsky and his followers lament
(see <a href="secI8.html#seci811">last section</a>), 
they did -- <b>in their own organisations.</b> Such a development 
proved to be a disaster and re-enforced the anarchist critique 
against hierarchical and centralised organisations. The CNT higher 
committees became isolated from the membership, pursued their 
own policies and compromised and paralysed the creative work 
being done by the rank and file -- as predicted in anarchist 
theory. However, be that as it may, as we will indicate below,
it would be false to assert that these higher committees simply
imposed the decision to collaborate on their memberships (as,
for example, Vernon Richards seems to imply in his <b>Lessons
of the Spanish Revolution</b>). While it <b>is</b> true that the
committees presented many decisions as a <b>fait accompli</b> 
the rank-and-file of the CNT and FAI did not simply follow orders 
nor ratify all of the decisions blindly.
</p><p>
In any revolutionary situation decisions have to be made quickly 
and sometimes without consulting the base of the organisation. 
However, such decisions must be accountable to the membership
who must discuss and ratify them (this was the policy within 
the CNT militias, for example). The experience of the CNT and 
FAI in countless strikes, insurrections and campaigns had proven 
the decentralised, federal structure was more than capable of 
pursuing the class war -- revolution is no exception as it is 
the class war in its most concentrated form. In other words, the 
organisational principles of the CNT and FAI were more than 
adequate for a revolutionary situation.
</p><p>
The centralising tendencies, therefore, cannot be blamed on
the exceptional circumstances of the war. Rather, it was the
policy of collaboration which explains them. Unlike the
numerous strikes and revolts that occurred before July 19th,
1936, the CNT higher committees had started to work within
the state structure. This, by its very nature, must generate
hierarchical and centralising tendencies as those involved
must adapt to the states basic structure and form. The
violations of CNT policy flowed from the initial decision
to compromise in the name of <i>"anti-fascist unity"</i> and a
vicious circle developed -- each compromise pushed the
CNT leadership further into the arms of the state, which 
increased hierarchical tendencies, which in turn isolated 
these higher committees from the membership, which in turn 
encouraged a conciliatory policy by those committees.
</p><p>
This centralising and hierarchical tendency did not mean that
the higher committees of the CNT simply imposed their will on 
the rest of the organisation. It is very clear that the decision 
to collaborate had, initially, the passive support of the majority 
of the CNT and FAI (probably because they thought the war would
be over after a few weeks or months). As visiting French anarchist 
Sebastian Faure noted, while <i>"effective participation in central 
authority has had the approval of the majority within the unions and 
in the groups affiliated to the FAI, that decision has in many places 
encountered the opposition of a fairly substantial minority. Thus 
there has been no unanimity."</i> [quoted by Jose Peirats, <b>The 
CNT in the Spanish Revolution</b>, vol. 1, p. 183] In the words 
of Peirats:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Were all of the militants of the same mind? . . . Excepting some 
vocal minorities which expressed their protests in their press 
organs and through committees, gatherings, plenums and assemblies, 
the dismal truth is that the bulk of the membership was in thrall 
to a certain fatalism which was itself a direct consequence of the 
tragic realities of the war."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 181]
</blockquote></p><p>
And:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"We have already seen how, on the economic plane, militant anarchism 
forged ahead, undaunted, with its work of transforming the economy. 
It is not to be doubted -- for to do so would have been to display 
ignorance of the psychology of the libertarian rank and file of the 
CNT -- that a muffled contest, occasionally erupting at plenums and 
assemblies and manifest in some press organs broke out as soon as
the backsliding began. In this connection, the body of opinion 
hostile to any possible deviation in tactics and principles was 
able to count throughout upon spirited champions."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 210]
</blockquote></p><p>
Thus, within the libertarian movement, there was a substantial 
minority who opposed the policy of collaboration and made their 
opinions known in various publications and meetings. While many
(if not most) revolutionary anarchists volunteered for the
militias and so were not active in their unions as before, there
were various groups (such as Catalan Libertarian Youth, the 
Friends of Durruti, other FAI groups, and so on) which were
opposed to collaboration and argued their case openly in the 
streets, collectives, organisational meetings and so on. Moreover, 
outside the libertarian movement the two tiny Trotskyist groups 
also argued against collaboration, as did sections of the POUM. 
Therefore it is impossible to state that the CNT membership 
were unaware of the arguments against the dominant policy. 
Also the Catalan CNT's higher committees, for example, after 
the May Days of 1937 could not get union assemblies or plenums 
to expel the Friends of Durruti nor to get them to withhold 
financial support for the Libertarian Youth, who opposed 
collaboration vigorously in their publications, nor 
get them to call upon various groups of workers to stop 
distributing opposition publications in the public transit 
system or with the daily milk. [Abe Bluestein, <i>"Translator's
Note"</i>, Juan Gomez Casas, <b>Anarchist Organisation: The 
History of the FAI</b>, p. 10] 
</p><p>
This suggests that in spite of centralising tendencies, the higher 
committees of the CNT were still subject to some degree of popular 
influence and control and should not be seen as having dictatorial 
powers over the organisation. While many decisions <b>were</b> presented 
as <b>fait accompli</b> to the union plenums (often called by the
committees at short notice), in violation of past CNT procedures, 
the plenums could not be railroaded into ratifying <b>any</b> 
decision the committees wanted. The objective circumstances
associated with the war against Franco and fascism convinced most 
CNT members and libertarian activists that working with other
parties and unions within the state was the only feasible option. 
Also to do otherwise, they thought, was to weaken the war effort by 
provoking another Civil War in the anti-Franco camp. While such a 
policy did not work (when it was strong enough the Republican state 
did start a civil war against the CNT which gutted the struggle 
against fascism) it cannot be argued that it was imposed upon 
the membership nor that they did not hear opposing positions.
Sadly, the call for anti-fascist unity dominated the minds of
the libertarian movement.
</p><p>
In the early stages, the majority of rank-and-file militants believed 
that the war would be over in a matter of weeks. After all, a few days 
had been sufficient to rout the army in Barcelona and other industrial 
centres. This inclined them to, firstly, tolerate (indeed, support)
the collaboration of the CNT with the <i>"Central Committee of Anti-Fascist
Militias"</i> and, secondly, to start expropriating capitalism in the
belief that the revolution would soon be back on track (the opportunity 
to start introducing anarchist ideas was simply too good to waste, 
regardless of the wishes of the CNT leadership). They believed that the 
revolution and libertarian communism, as debated and adopted by the 
CNT's Zaragoza Congress of May that year, was an inseparable aspect 
of the struggle against fascism and proceeded appropriately. The
ignoring of the state, rather than its destruction, was seen as
a short-term compromise, soon to be corrected. Sadly, there were
wrong -- collaboration had a logic all its own, one which got
worse as the war dragged on (and soon it was too late).
</p><p>
Which, we must note indicates the superficial nature of most Marxist 
attacks on anarchism using the CNT as the key evidence. After all, it 
was the anarchists and anarchist influenced members of the CNT who
organised the collectives, militias and started the transformation
of Spanish society. They did so inspired by anarchism and in an
anarchist way. To praise their actions, while attacking "anarchism",
shows a lack of logic. Indeed, these actions have more in common with 
anarchist ideas than the actions and rationales of the CNT leadership. 
Thus, to attack "anarchism" by pointing to the anti-anarchist actions
of a few leaders while ignoring the anarchist actions of the majority
is flawed. 
</p><p>
Therefore, to summarise, it is clear that while the internal structure 
of the CNT was undermined and authoritarian tendencies increased by 
its collaboration with the state, the CNT was not transformed into 
a mere appendage to the higher committees of the organisation. 
The union plenums could and did reject the calls made by the 
leadership of the CNT. Support for "anti-fascist unity" was 
widespread among the CNT membership (in spite of the activities 
and arguments of large minority of anarchists) and was reflected 
in the policy of collaboration pursued by the organisation. While 
the CNT higher committees were transformed into a bureaucratic 
leadership, increasingly isolated from the rank and file, it
cannot be argued that their power was absolute nor totally at 
odds with the wishes of the membership. Ironically, but 
unsurprisingly, the divergences from the CNT's previous 
libertarian organisational principles confirmed anarchist 
theory, becoming a drag on the revolution and a factor in 
its defeat.
</p><p>
As we argued in 
<a href="secI8.html#seci811">section I.8.11</a>, 
the initial compromise with the 
state, the initial betrayal of anarchist theory and CNT policy, 
contained all the rest. Moreover, rather than refute anarchism, 
the experience of the CNT after it had rejected anarchist theory
confirmed it -- centralised, hierarchical organisations 
hindered and ultimately destroyed the revolution. The 
experience of the CNT and FAI suggests that those, like 
Leninists, who argue for <b>more</b> centralisation and for 
"democratic" hierarchical structures have refused to understand,
let alone learn from, history. The increased centralisation 
within the CNT aided and empowered the leadership (a minority)
and disempowered the membership (the majority). Rather than
federalism hindering the revolution, it, as always, was
centralism which did so. 
</p><p>
Therefore, in spite of a sizeable minority of anarchists <b>within</b>
the CNT and FAI arguing against the dominant policy of
"anti-fascist unity" and political collaboration, this policy
was basically agreed to by the CNT membership and was not
imposed upon them. The membership of the CNT could, and did,
reject suggestions of the leadership and so, in spite of the
centralisation of power that occurred in the CNT due to the
policy of collaboration, it cannot be argued that this policy
was alien to the wishes of the rank-and-file however lamentable
the results of that position were.
</p>

<a name="seci813"><h2>I.8.13 What political lessons were learned from the revolution?</h2></a>

<p>
The most important political lesson learned from the Spanish Revolution 
is that a revolution cannot compromise with existing power structures. 
In this, it just confirmed anarchist theory and the basic libertarian
position that a social revolution will only succeed if it follows an 
anarchist path and does not seek to compromise in the name of 
fighting a "greater evil." As Kropotkin put it, a <i>"revolution
that stops half-way is sure to be soon defeated."</i> [<b>The Great
French Revolution</b>, vol. 2, p. 553]
</p><p>
On the 20th of July, after the fascist coup had been defeated in 
Barcelona, the CNT sent a delegation of its members to meet the 
leader of the Catalan Government. A plenum of CNT union shop 
stewards, in the light of the fascist coup, agreed that libertarian 
communism would be postpone until Franco had been defeated (the 
rank and file ignored them and collectivised their workplaces). 
They organised a delegation to visit the Catalan president 
to discuss the situation:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The delegation . . . was intransigent . . . Either Companys 
[the Catalan president] must accept the creation of a Central 
Committee [of Anti-Fascist Militias] as the ruling organisation 
or the CNT would <b>consult the rank and file and expose the real 
situation to the workers.</b> Companys backed down."</i> [our emphasis, 
Abel Paz, <b>Durruti: The People Armed</b>, p. 216]
</blockquote></p><p>
The CNT committee members used their new-found influence in the 
eyes of Spain to unite with the leaders of other organisations/parties 
but not the rank and file. This process lead to the creation of the 
<b>Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias</b>, in which political 
parties as well as labour unions were represented. This committee 
was not made up of mandated delegates from workplaces, communities
or barricades, but of representatives of existing organisations, 
nominated by committees. Instead of a genuine confederal body (made 
up of mandated delegates from workplace, militia and neighbourhood 
assemblies) the CNT created a body which was not accountable to, 
nor could reflect the ideas of, working class people expressed in 
their assemblies. The state and government was not abolished by 
self-management, only ignored. This was a mistake and many soon
came <i>"to realise that once they went into the so-called 
united-front, they could do nothing else but go further. In other 
words, the one mistake, the one wrong step inevitably led to 
others as it always does. I am more than ever convinced that if 
the comrades had remained firm on their own grounds they would 
have remained stronger than they are now. But I repeat, once they 
had made common cause for the period of the anti-Fascist war, they 
were driven by the logic of events to go further."</i> [Emma
Goldman, <b>Vision on Fire</b>, pp. 100-1] 
</p><p>
The most obvious problem, of course, was that collaboration with 
the state ensured that a federation of workers' associations
could not be created to co-ordinate the struggle against fascism 
and the social revolution. As Stuart Christie argues: <i>"By 
imposing their leadership from above, these partisan committees
suffocated the mushrooming popular autonomous revolutionary
centres -- the grass-roots factory and local revolutionary
committees -- and prevented them from proving themselves
as an efficient and viable means of co-ordinating communications,
defence and provisioning. They also prevented the Local
Revolutionary committees from integrating with each other
to form a regional, provincial and national federal network
which would facilitate the revolutionary task of social
and economic reconstruction."</i> [<b>We, the Anarchists!</b>, 
pp. 99-100] Without such a federation, it was only a matter of 
time before the CNT joined the bourgeois government.
</p><p>
Rather than being <i>"a regime of <b>dual power</b>"</i> and the
<i>"most important"</i> of the <i>"new organs of power"</i> as 
many Trotskyists, following Felix Morrow, maintain, the <b>Central 
Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias</b> created on July 20th, 1936, 
was, in fact, an organ of class collaboration and a handicap to 
the revolution. [<b>Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain</b>,
p. 85 and p. 83] Stuart Christie was correct to call it an 
<i>"artificial and hybrid creation,"</i> a <i>"compromise, an 
artificial political solution, an officially sanctioned appendage 
of the Generalidad government"</i> which <i>"drew the CNT-FAI 
leadership inexorably into the State apparatus, until then its 
principal enemy."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 105] Only a true 
federation of delegates from the fields, factories and workplaces 
could have been the framework of a true organisation of (to use 
Bakunin's expression) <i>"the social (and, by consequence, 
anti-political) power of the working masses."</i> [<b>Michael 
Bakunin: Selected Writings</b>, pp. 197-8]
</p><p>
Therefore, the CNT forgot a basic principle of anarchism,
namely <i>"the destruction . . . of the States."</i> Instead, like
the Paris Commune, the CNT thought that <i>"in order to combat 
. . . reaction, they had to organise themselves in reactionary 
Jacobin fashion, forgetting or sacrificing what they themselves 
knew were the first conditions of revolutionary socialism."</i> The 
real basis of the revolution, the basic principle of anarchism,
was that the <i>"future social organisation must be made solely 
from the bottom upwards, by the free association or federation 
of workers, firstly in their unions, then in communes, regions, 
nations and finally in a great federation, international and 
universal."</i> [Bakunin, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 198, p. 202 and 
p. 204] By not doing this, by working in a top-down compromise 
body rather than creating a federation of workers' councils, the 
CNT leadership could not help eventually sacrificing the revolution 
in favour of the war. 
</p><p>
Of course, if a full plenum of CNT unions and <b>barrios</b> 
defence committees, with delegates invited from UGT and 
unorganised workplaces, had taken place there is no 
guarantee that the decision reached would have been in
line with anarchist theory. The feelings for antifascist
unity were strong. However, the decision would have been
fully discussed by the rank and file of the union, under
the influence of the revolutionary anarchists who were
later to join the militias and leave for the front. It
is likely, given the wave of collectivisation and what 
happened in Aragn, that the decision would have been 
different and the first step would have made to turn this 
plenum into the basis of a free federation of workers 
associations -- i.e. the framework of a self-managed 
society -- which could have smashed the state and ensured 
no other appeared to take its place.
</p><p>
So the basic idea of anarchism, the need to create a federation of
workers councils, was ignored. In the name of "antifascist" unity, 
the CNT worked with parties and classes which hated both them 
and the revolution. In the words of Sam Dolgoff <i>"both before and 
after July 19th, an unwavering determination to crush the 
revolutionary movement was the leitmotif behind the policies 
of the Republican government; irrespective of the party in 
power."</i> [<b>The Anarchist Collectives</b>, p. 40] Without creating
a means to organise the <i>"social power"</i> of the working class,
the CNT was defenceless against these parties once the state
had re-organised itself.
</p><p>
To justify their collaboration, the leaders of the CNT-FAI argued 
that not to do so would have lead to a civil war within the civil 
war, so allowing Franco easy victory. In practice, while paying lip 
service to the revolution, the Communists and republicans attacked 
the collectives, murdered anarchists, restricted supplies to collectivised 
industries (even <b>war</b> industries) and disbanded the anarchist militias 
after refusing to give them weapons and ammunition (preferring to arm 
the Civil Guard in the rearguard in order to crush the CNT and the
revolution). By collaborating, a civil war was not avoided. One occurred
anyway, with the working class as its victims, as soon as the state felt
strong enough. 
</p><p>
Garcia Oliver (the first ever, and hopefully last, "anarchist" minister 
of justice) stated in 1937 that collaboration was necessary and that the 
CNT had <i>"renounc[ed] revolutionary totalitarianism, which would lead to 
the strangulation of the revolution by anarchist and Confederal [CNT]
dictatorship. We had confidence in the word and in the person of a Catalan
democrat"</i> Companys (who had in the past jailed anarchists). [quoted
by Vernon Richards, <b>Lessons of the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 34] 
Which means that only by working with the state, politicians and 
capitalists can an anarchist revolution be truly libertarian! Furthermore:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"This argument contains . . . two fundamental mistakes, which many 
of the leaders of the CNT-FAI have since recognised, but for which 
there can be no excuse, since they were not mistakes of judgement 
but the deliberate abandonment of the principles of the CNT. Firstly, 
that an armed struggle against fascism or any other form of reaction 
could be waged more successfully within the framework of the State 
and subordinating all else, including the transformation of the 
economic and social structure of the country, to winning the war. 
Secondly, that it was essential, and possible, to collaborate with  
political parties -- that is politicians -- honestly and sincerely, 
and at a time when power was in the hands of the two workers 
organisations . . .</i></blockquote>
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"All the initiative . . . was in the hands of the workers. The  
politicians were like generals without armies floundering in a  
desert of futility. Collaboration with them could not, by any  
stretch of the imagination, strengthen resistance to Franco. 
On the contrary, it was clear that collaboration with political 
parties meant the recreation of governmental institutions and the 
transferring of initiative from the armed workers to a central 
body with executive powers. By removing the initiative from the 
workers, the responsibility for the conduct of the struggle and 
its objectives were also transferred to a governing hierarchy, 
and this could not have other than an adverse effect on the morale 
of the revolutionary fighters."</i> [Richards, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 42]
</blockquote></p><p>
The dilemma of <i>"anarchist dictatorship"</i> or <i>"collaboration"</i> 
raised in 1937 was fundamentally wrong. It was never a case of banning 
parties, and other organisations under an anarchist system, far 
from it. Full rights of free speech, organisation and so on should 
have existed for all but the parties would only have as much 
influence as they exerted in union, workplace, community and 
militia assemblies, as should be the case! "Collaboration" yes, 
but within the rank and file and within organisations organised 
in an anarchist manner. Anarchism does not respect the "freedom" 
to be a boss or politician. In his history of the FAI, Juan Gomaz 
Casas (an active FAI member in 1936) made this clear:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"How else could libertarian communism be brought about? It would 
always signify dissolution of the old parties dedicated to the idea 
of power, or at least make it impossible for them to pursue their 
politics aimed at seizure of power. There will always be pockets of 
opposition to new experiences and therefore resistance to joining 
'the spontaneity of the unanimous masses.' In addition, the masses 
would have complete freedom of expression in the unions and in the 
economic organisations of the revolution as well as their political 
organisations in the district and communities."</i> [<b>Anarchist 
Organisation: the History of the FAI</b>, p. 188f]
</blockquote></p><p>
Instead of this "collaboration" from the bottom up, by means
of a federation of workers' associations, community assemblies
and militia columns as argued for by anarchists from Bakunin
onwards, the CNT and FAI committees favoured "collaboration" 
from the top down. The leaders ignored the state and co-operated 
with other trade unions officials as well as political parties in 
the <b>Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias</b>. In other words, 
they ignored their political ideas in favour of a united front 
against what they considered the greater evil, namely fascism. 
This inevitably lead the way to counter-revolution, the destruction 
of the militias and collectives, as they was no means by which
these groups could co-ordinate their activities independently
of the state. The continued existence of the state ensured that 
economic confederalism between collectives (i.e. extending the 
revolution under the direction of the syndicates) could not 
develop naturally nor be developed far enough in all places. 
Due to the political compromises of the CNT the tendencies 
to co-ordination and mutual aid could not develop freely 
(see <a href="secI8.html#seci814">next section</a>).
</p><p>
It is clear that the defeat in Spain was due to a failure not of 
anarchist theory and tactics but a failure of anarchists to <b>apply</b> 
their theory and tactics. Instead of destroying the state, the 
CNT-FAI ignored it. For a revolution to be successful it 
needs to create organisations which can effectively replace the 
state and the market; that is, to create a widespread libertarian 
organisation for social and economic decision-making through
which working class people can start to set their own agendas. 
Only by going down this route can the state and capitalism be 
effectively smashed.
</p><p>
In building the new world we must destroy the old one. Revolutions
may be, as Engels suggested, "authoritarian" by their very nature, 
but only in respect to institutions, structures and social relations 
which promote injustice, hierarchy and inequality. As discussed in
<a href="secH4.html#sech47">section H.7.4</a>, it is not 
"authoritarian" to destroy authority and not tyrannical to 
dethrone tyrants! Revolutions, above all else, must be libertarian 
in respect to the oppressed. That is, they must develop structures 
that involve the great majority of the population, who have previously 
been excluded from decision-making on social and economic issues. In fact, 
a revolution is the most <b>libertarian</b> thing ever.
</p><p>
As the <b>Friends of Durruti</b> argued a <i>"revolution requires the 
absolute domination of the workers' organisations."</i> [<i>"The Friends 
of Durruti accuse"</i>, <b>Class War on the Home Front</b>, Wildcat 
Group (ed.), p. 34] Only this, the creation of viable anarchist social 
organisations, can ensure that the state and capitalism can be destroyed 
and replaced with a just system based on liberty, equality and solidarity. 
Just as Bakunin, Kropotkin and a host of other anarchist thinkers had 
argued decades previously (see <a href="secH1.html#sech14">section H.1.4</a>). 
Thus the most important lesson gained from the Spanish Revolution
is simply the correctness of anarchist theory on the need to
organise the social and economic power of the working class by a free
federation of workers associations to destroy the state. Without 
this, no revolution can be lasting. As Gomez Casas correctly
argued, <i>"if instead of condemning that experience [of collaboration],
the movement continues to look for excuses for it, the same
course will be repeated in the future . . . exceptional
circumstances will again put . . . anarchism on [its] knees
before the State."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 251]
</p><p>
The second important lesson is on the nature of anti-fascism. The 
CNT leadership, along with many (if not most) of the rank-and-file, 
were totally blinded by the question of anti-fascist unity, leading 
them to support a "democratic" state against a "fascist" one. While 
the basis of a new world was being created around them by the working 
class, inspiring the fight against fascism, the CNT leaders 
collaborated with the system that spawns fascism. While the 
anti-fascist feelings of the CNT leadership were sincere, the
same cannot be said of their "allies" (who seemed happier attacking
the gains of the semi-revolution than fighting fascism). As the 
Friends of Durruti make clear: <i>"Democracy defeated the Spanish 
people, not Fascism."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 30] To be opposed to 
fascism is not enough, you also have to be anti-capitalist. As 
Durruti stressed, <i>"[n]o government in the world fights fascism 
to the death. When the bourgeoisie sees power slipping from its 
grasp, it has recourse to fascism to maintain itself."</i> 
[quoted by Vernon Richards, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 193f] In 
Spain, anti-fascism destroyed the revolution, not fascism. As 
the Scottish Anarchist Ethel McDonald argued at the time: <i>"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."</i> [<b>Workers Free Press</b>, October 1937]
</p><p>
Thirdly, the argument of the CNT that Libertarian Communism
had to wait until after the war was a false one. Fascism can only
be defeated by ending the system that spawned it (i.e. capitalism).
In addition, in terms of morale and inspiration, the struggle
against fascism could only be effective if it were also a struggle
<b>for</b> something better -- namely a free society. To fight fascism
for a capitalist democracy which had repressed the working class
would hardly inspire those at the front. Similarly, the only hope 
for workers' self-management was to push the revolution as far
as possible, i.e. to introduce libertarian communism while
fighting fascism. The idea of waiting for libertarian communism
ultimately meant sacrificing it for the war effort. This would, by
necessity, mean the end of the revolutionary spirit and hope which
could inspire and sustain the war effort. Why would people fight 
for a return to the status quo? A status quo that they had rebelled
against before the start of the civil war and which had provoked
the fascist coup in the first place.
</p><p>
Fourthly, the role of anarchists in a social revolution is to
always encourage organisation <i>"from below"</i> (to use one of
Bakunin's favourite expressions), revolutionary organisations
which can effectively smash the state. Bakunin himself argued
(see <a href="secI8.html#seci811">section I.8.11</a>) in 
favour of workers' councils, complemented by community
 assemblies (the federation of the barricades) and a 
self-managed militia. This model is still applicable today
and was successfully applied in Aragn by the CNT.
</p><p>
Therefore, the political lessons gained from the experience of the
CNT come as no surprise. They simply repeat long standing positions
within anarchist theory. As anarchists have argued since Bakunin, no 
revolution is possible unless the state is smashed, capital expropriated 
and a free federation of workers' associations created as the framework 
of libertarian socialism. Rather than refuting anarchism, the experience 
of the Spanish Revolution confirms it.
</p>

<a name="seci814"><h2>I.8.14 What economic lessons were learned from the revolution?</h2></a>

<p>
The most important economic lesson from the revolution is the fact that 
working class people took over the management of industry and did an 
amazing job of keeping (and improving!) production in the face of the 
direst circumstances (a factor often overlooked by the opponents of 
anarchism and the revolution). Not only did workers create a war industry 
from almost nothing in Catalonia, they also improved working conditions 
and innovated with new techniques and processes. The Spanish Revolution 
shows that self-management is possible and that the constructive powers 
of people inspired by an ideal can transform society.
</p><p>
Self-management allowed a massive increase in innovation and new ideas. 
The Spanish Revolution is clear proof of the anarchist case against 
hierarchy and validates Isaac Puente words that in <i>"a free collective
each benefits from accumulated knowledge and specialised experiences of 
all, and vice versa. There is a reciprocal relationship wherein information 
is in continuous circulation."</i> [<b>The Anarchist Collectives</b>, 
p. 32] The workers, freed from economic autocracy, started to transform 
their workplaces and how the produced goods.
</p><p>
From the point of view of individual freedom, it is clear that self-management 
allowed previously marginalised people to take an active part in the decisions 
that affected them. Egalitarian organisations provided the framework for a 
massive increase in participation and individual self-government, which 
expressed itself in the extensive innovations carried out by the Collectives. 
The Collectives indicate, in Stirner's words, that <i>"[o]nly in the union can 
you assert yourself as unique, because the union does not possess you, but 
you possess it or make it of use to you."</i> [<b>The Ego and Its Own</b>, 
p. 312] A fact Emma Goldman confirmed from her visits to collectives and 
discussions with their members:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"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 [1920-21]
I never heard any workers express this idea of greater freedom."</i> 
[<b>Vision on Fire</b>, p. 62]
</blockquote></p><p>
As predicted in anarchist theory, and borne out by actual experience, there
exists large untapped reserves of energy and initiative in the ordinary
person which self-management can call forth. The collectives proved 
Kropotkin's argument that co-operative work is more productive and that if 
the economists wish to prove <i>"their thesis in favour of <b>private property</b> 
against all other forms of <b>possession</b>, should not the economists demonstrate 
that under the form of communal property land never produces such rich 
harvests as when the possession is private. But this they could not prove; 
in fact, it is the contrary that has been observed."</i> [<b>The Conquest 
of Bread</b>, p. 146]
</p><p>
Beyond this five important lessons can be derived from the actual experience 
of a libertarian socialist economy:
</p><p>
Firstly, that an anarchist society cannot be created overnight, but is a 
product of many different influences as well as the objective conditions.
In this the anarchist collectives confirmed the ideas of anarchist
thinkers like Bakunin and Kropotkin (see 
<a href="secI2.html#seci22">section I.2.2</a>). 
The collectives although, as mentioned in 
<a href="secI8.html#seci83">section I.8.3</a>, based on key libertarian
principles they were a somewhat unexpected development. They reflected 
objective circumstances facing the revolution as well as libertarian theory
and, with regards the latter, were somewhat limited. However, they were 
organisations created from below by the revolution and so capable of 
development and progress. 
</p><p>
The lesson from every revolution is that the mistakes made in the 
process of liberation by people themselves are always minor compared 
to the results of a self-proclaimed vanguard creating institutions 
<b>for</b> people. The Spanish Revolution is a clear example of 
this, with the Catalan state's <i>"collectivisation decree"</i> 
causing more harm than good (as intended, it controlled and so 
limited the economic transformation of the economy). Luckily, the 
Spanish anarchists recognised the importance of having the freedom 
to make mistakes, as can be seen by the many different forms of 
collectives and federations tried. The actual process in Spain 
towards industrial co-ordination and so socialisation was 
dependent on the wishes of the workers involved -- as would 
be expected in a true social revolution. As Bakunin argued,
the <i>"revolution should not only be made for the people's sake; it 
should also be made by the people."</i> [<b>No Gods, No Masters</b>, vol. 1, 
p. 141] The problems faced by a social revolution will be solved 
in the interests of the working class only if working class people 
solve them themselves. For this to happen it requires working class 
people to manage their own affairs directly -- and this implies
anarchism, not centralisation or state control/ownership. The
experience of the collectives in Spain supports.
</p><p>
Secondly, the importance of decentralisation of management. As discussed in
<a href="secI8.html#seci84">section I.8.4</a>, different areas and industries
tried different forms of federation. The woodworkers' union experience 
indicates that a collectivised industry can became centralised, with even
a democratically elected administration leading to rank-and-file workers 
becoming marginalised which could soon result in apathy developing within 
it. This was predicted by Kropotkin and other anarchist theorists (and by 
many anarchists in Spain at the time). While undoubtedly better than 
capitalist hierarchy, such democratically run industries are only close 
approximations to anarchist ideas of self-management. Importantly, however, 
the collectivisation experiments also indicate that co-operation need not 
imply centralisation (as can be seen from the Badelona collectives).
</p><p>
Thirdly, the importance of building links of solidarity between workplaces
as soon as possible. While the importance of starting production after the 
fascist uprising made attempts at co-ordination seem of secondary importance 
to the collectives, the competition that initially occurred between workplaces 
helped the state to undermine self-management (for example, the state <i>"was
actively using its control of finances to contain and stifle radical change"</i>
[Graham Kesley, <b>Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State</b>, 
p. 172]). As there was no People's Bank or federal body to co-ordinate credit 
and production, state control of credit and the gold reserves made it easier 
for the Republican state to undermine the revolution by controlling the 
collectives and (effectively) nationalising them in time (Durruti and a 
few others planned to seize the gold reserves but were advised not to by 
Abad de Santilln). 
</p><p>
This attack on the revolution started when the Catalan State issued a decree 
legalising (and so controlling) the collectives in October 1936 (the infamous 
<i>"Collectivisation Decree"</i>). The counter-revolution also withheld funds 
for collectivised industries, even war industries, until they agreed to come 
under state control. The industrial organisation created by this decree was 
a compromise between anarchist ideas and those of other parties (particularly 
the communists) and in the words of Gaston Leval, <i>"the decree had the baneful 
effect of preventing the workers' syndicates from extending their gains. It set 
back the revolution in industry."</i> [<b>The Anarchist Collectives</b>, p. 54]
</p><p>
And lastly, that an economic revolution can only succeed if the existing 
state is destroyed. As Kropotkin argued, <i>"a new form of economic organisation 
will necessarily require a new form of political structure."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>, 
p. 181] Capitalism needs the state, socialism needs anarchy. Without the new 
political structure, the new economic organisation cannot develop to its full 
potential. Due to the failure to consolidate the revolution <b>politically</b>, 
it was lost <b>economically</b>. The decree <i>"legalising"</i> collectivisation 
<i>"distorted everything right from the start."</i> [Leval, <b>Collectives 
in the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 227] This helped undermine the revolution 
by ensuring that the mutualism of the collectives did not develop freely into 
libertarian communism (<i>"The collectives lost the economic freedom they had 
won at the beginning"</i> due to the decree, as one participant put it). 
Collectives, of course, tried to ignore the state. As an eyewitness pointed 
out, the CNT's <i>"policy was thus not the same as that pursued by the 
decree."</i> [quoted by Ronald Fraser, <b>Blood of Spain</b>, p. 230 and 
p. 213] Indeed, leading anarchists like Abad de Santilln opposed it: 
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"I was an enemy of the decree because I considered it premature . . .
when I became councillor, I had no intention of taking into account or 
carrying out the decree: I intended to allow our great people to carry 
on the task as they best saw fit, according to their own inspiration."</i> 
[quoted by Fraser, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 212fn] 
</blockquote></p><p>
However, with the revolution lost politically, the CNT was soon forced 
to compromise and support the decree (the CNT did propose more libertarian 
forms of co-ordination between workplaces but these were undermined by
the state). A lack of effective mutual aid organisations allowed the 
state to gain power over the collectives and so undermine and destroy 
self-management. Working class control over the economy (important as it 
is) does not automatically destroy the state. In other words, the economic 
aspects of the revolution cannot be considered in isolation from its 
political ones. 
</p><p>
Yet these points do not diminish the successes of the Spanish revolution. 
As Gaston Leval argued, <i>"in spite of these shortcomings"</i> caused 
lack of complete socialisation <i>"the important fact is that the 
factories went on working, the workshops and works produced without the 
owners, capitalists, shareholders and without high management executives."</i> 
[<b>Collectives in the Spanish Revolution</b>, p. 228] Beyond doubt, 
these months of economic liberty in Spain show not only that libertarian 
socialism <b>works</b> and that working class people can manage and run 
society but also that we can improve the quality of life and increase 
freedom. Given the time and breathing space, the experiment would 
undoubtedly have ironed out its problems. Even in the very difficult 
environment of a civil war (and with resistance of almost all other 
parties and unions) the workers and peasants of Spain showed that a 
better society is possible. They gave a concrete example of what was 
previously just a vision, a world which was more humane, more free, 
more equitable and more civilised than that run by capitalists, 
managers, politicians and bureaucrats.
</p>

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