    I.8 Does revolutionary Spain show that libertarian socialism can work in
                                   practice?

   Yes. Revolutionary Spain "shows you what human beings are like when
   they are trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the
   capitalist machine." [George Orwell, Orwell in Spain, 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:

     "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."
     ["Introductory Essay," The Anarchist Collectives, Sam Dolgoff (ed.),
     p. xxxix]

   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:

     "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.

     "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 . .
     .

     "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." [Op. Cit., pp.
     6-7]

   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.

   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
   "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." [Jose
   Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 223]

   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 every 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
   The Anarchists of Casa Viejas and J. Romero Maura's article "The
   Spanish case" [Anarchism Today, 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 [1]"Marxists and Spanish Anarchism" for
   a reply to some of the more common ones).

   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:

     "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." [Durruti: The
     People Armed, p. 243]

   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:

     "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 our
     control, of under anyone's. Of possibility. We had everything. We
     had Barcelona: It was ours. You'd walk out in the streets, and they
     were ours -- here, CNT; there, comite this or that. It was totally
     different. Full of possibility. A feeling that we could, together,
     really do something. That we could make things different." [quoted
     by Martha A. Ackelsberg and Myrna Margulies Breithart, "Terrains of
     Protest: Striking City Women", pp. 151-176, Our Generation, vol. 19,
     No. 1, pp. 164-5]

   Moreover, the transformation of society that occurred during the
   revolution extended to all areas of life and work. For example, the
   revolution saw "the creation of a health workers' union, a true
   experiment in socialised medicine. They provided medical assistance and
   opened hospitals and clinics." [Juan Gomez Casas, Anarchist
   Organisation: The History of the FAI, p. 192] We discuss this example
   in some detail in [2]section I.5.12 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.

   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. "It is only those who do nothing who make no
   mistakes," as Kropotkin so correctly pointed out. [Anarchism, 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.

   For more information about the social revolution, Sam Dolgoff's
   anthology The Anarchist Collectives is an excellent starting place.
   Gaston Leval's Collectives in the Spanish Revolution is another
   essential text. Jose Peirats' Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution and
   his three volume quasi-official history The CNT in the Spanish
   Revolution are key works. Vernon Richards' Lessons of the Spanish
   Revolution is an excellent critical anarchist work on the revolution
   and the role of the anarchists. Spain 1936-1939: Social Revolution and
   Counter-Revolution (edited by Vernon Richards) is a useful collection
   of articles from the time. Abel Paz's Durruti in the Spanish Revolution
   is a classic biography of Spanish anarchism's most famous militant
   (this is an expanded version of his earlier Durruti: The People Armed).
   Emma Goldman's opinions on the Spanish Revolution are collected in
   Vision on Fire.

   Robert Alexander's The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War is a good
   general overview of the anarchist's role in the revolution and civil
   war, as is Burnett Bolloten's The Spanish Civil War. Daniel Gurin's
   anthology No Gods, No Masters as two sections on the Spanish
   Revolution, one specifically on the collectives. Noam Chomsky's
   excellent essay "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship" 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
   Chomsky on Anarchism, The Chomsky Reader, and American Power and the
   New Mandarins). George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia 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 Orwell in Spain. Murray Bookchin's
   The Spanish Anarchists is a useful history, but ends just as the
   revolution breaks out and so needs to be completed by his To Remember
   Spain and the essay "Looking Back at Spain". Stuart Christie's We, The
   Anarchists! is an important history on the Iberian Anarchist
   Federation.

I.8.1 Is the Spanish Revolution inapplicable as a model for modern societies?

   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.

   In total, the "regions most affected" by collectivisation "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." 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, The Spanish Civil War, pp. 91-2]

   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 "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." [The Anarchist Collectives, pp. 7-8]
   According to Augustin Souchy:

     "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." [Op.
     Cit., p. 94]

   Moreover, Spain in the 1930s was not 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, The Blood of Spain, 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.

   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, Op. Cit., 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.

   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.

   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.

I.8.2 How were the anarchists able to obtain mass popular support in Spain?

   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.

   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.

   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.

   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 "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." [quoted by Jerome R. Mintz, The Anarchists
   of Casas Viejas, p. 27]

   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 "[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."
   Jose Campos noted that FAI militants "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
   faista in open assembly." [quoted by Stuart Christie, We, the
   Anarchists, p. 62]

   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 content 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 "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." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 247] The CNT was built on
   such "popular assemblies," 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.

   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: "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." [Sam Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives, p. 27] The
   discussion of political, economic and social ideas was continuous, and
   "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." [Mintz,
   Op. Cit., p. 160] One anarchist militant described it as follows:

     "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." [Perez Cordon, quoted
     by Mintz, Op. Cit., p. 158]

   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,
   Solidaridad Obrera (Worker Solidarity), with a circulation of 30,000.
   The FAI's magazine Tierra y Libertad (Land and Liberty) had a
   circulation of 20,000. In Gijon there was Vida Obrera (Working Life),
   in Seville El Productor (The Producer) and in Saragossa Accion y
   Cultura (Action and Culture), each with a large circulation. There were
   many more.

   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.

   This was the great strength of the Spanish Anarchist movement. It was a
   movement "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." [Nick Rider, "The practice of direct action:
   the Barcelona rent strike of 1931", pp. 79-105, For Anarchism, David
   Goodway (Ed.), p. 99]

   Historian Temma Kaplan stressed this in her work on the Andalusian
   anarchists. She argued that the anarchists were "rooted in" social life
   and created "a movement firmly based in working-class culture." They
   "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." Their "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." [Anarchists
   of Andalusia: 1868-1903, p. 211, p. 207 and pp. 204-5]

   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 "the demands of the CNT went much further than
   those of any social democrat: with its emphasis on true equality,
   autogestion [self-management] and working class dignity,
   anarchosyndicalism made demands the capitalist system could not
   possibly grant to the workers." [J. Romero Maura, "The Spanish case",
   pp. 60-83, Anarchism Today, D. Apter and J. Joll (eds.), p. 79]

   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 "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." [Mintz, Op.
   Cit., p. 102]

   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 ("The CNT tradition was to discuss and examine
   everything", 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, "above the union level, the
   CNT was an eminently political organisation . . ., a social and
   revolutionary organisation for agitation and insurrection." [Anarchists
   in the Spanish Revolution, p. 239] The CNT was organised in such a way
   as to encourage solidarity and class consciousness. Its organisation
   was based on the sindicato unico (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 "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."
   [Op. Cit.p. 75]

   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.

   In other words, "the route to radicalisation . . . came from direct
   involvement in struggle and in the design of alternative social
   institutions." 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 "did not topple the government, patterns of organisation
   established then provided models for the anarchist movement for years
   to follow." [Martha A. Ackelsberg and Myrna Margulies Breithart,
   "Terrains of Protest: Striking City Women", pp. 151-176, Our
   Generation, 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.

   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 "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 real
   social process signified (hence the constant reference to 'religious'
   'messianic' models as explanations)." After discussing and refuting
   five common suggestions for the success of anarchism in Spain, he
   concluded that the "explanation of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism's
   success in organising a mass movement with a sustained revolutionary
   elan should initially be sought in the very nature of the anarchist
   conception of society and of how to achieve revolution." [Op. Cit. p.
   78 and p. 65]

   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.

   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.

I.8.3 How were Spanish industrial collectives organised?

   Martha A. Ackelsberg gives us an excellent short summary of how the
   industrial collectives where organised:

     "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." [Free Women of Spain, p. 100]

   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:

     "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." [Augustin Souchy, The Anarchist Collectives, p. 67]

   In Catalonia "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." [Souchy, Op.
   Cit., p 95]

   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 "[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." [Gaston Leval, Collectives in the
   Spanish Revolution, p. 303] Power rested at the base of the collective,
   with "all important decisions [being] taken by the general assemblies
   of the workers" which "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." An
   example of this process can be seen from the Casa Rivieria company.
   After the defeat of the army coup "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." [Robert
   Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, vol. 1, p. 469 and
   p. 532]

   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 [3]section I.3.1). 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 and 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 "was doubtful that the
   CNT had seriously envisaged collectivisation of industry . . . before
   this time." [The Blood of Spain, 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.

   Therefore, the collectives were (initially) a form of "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." 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
   political aspect of the revolution meant that the revolution in the
   economy was doomed to failure. As Leval stressed, in "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." [Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution,
   pp. 227-8 and p. 227]

   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 "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." [Abel Paz,
   Durruti in the Spanish Revolution, 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 [4]section I.3.5). These
   attempts at federation and co-ordination will be discussed in [5]next
   section, 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.

I.8.4 How were the Spanish industrial collectives co-ordinated?

   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.

   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.

   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:

     "Local industries went through stages almost universally adopted in
     that revolution . . . [I]n the first instance, comites 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.'

     "The idea won support immediately." [Collectives in the Spanish
     Revolution, pp. 291-2]

   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 "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." [Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain, p. 222]

   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:

     "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." [quoted by Souchy,
     Anarchist Collectives, p. 83]

   As Souchy pointed out, this document is very important in the evolution
   of collectivisation, because it indicates a realisation that "workers
   must take into account that partial collectivisation will in time
   degenerate into a kind of bourgeois co-operativism." [Op. Cit., 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.

   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).

   Syndicalisation (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, "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." 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 "major failure . . . (and which
   supported the original anarchist objection) was that the union became
   like a large firm" and its "structure grew increasingly rigid." [Ronald
   Fraser, Blood of Spain, p. 222] According to one militant, "From the
   outside it began to look like an American or German trust" and the
   workers found it difficult to secure any changes and "felt they weren't
   particularly involved in decision making." [quoted by Fraser, Op. Cit.,
   p. 222 and p. 223] However, this did not stop workers re-electing
   almost all posts at the first Annual General Assembly.

   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.

   The other important form of co-operation was what we will term
   confederalisation. This system was based on horizontal links between
   workplaces (via the CNT union) and allowed a maximum of self-management
   and 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, "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." This system ensured that the "dangers of the
   big 'union trust' as of the atomised collective were avoided." [Fraser,
   Op. Cit., p. 229] According to one militant, the union "acted more as a
   socialist control of collectivised industry than as a direct
   hierarchised executive." The federation of collectives created "the
   first social security system in Spain" (which included retirement pay,
   free medicines, sick and maternity pay) and a compensation fund was
   organised "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." [quoted by Fraser, Op.
   Cit., p. 229]

   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 [6]section
   H.2.5, 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.

I.8.5 How were the Spanish agricultural co-operatives organised and
co-ordinated?

   Jose Peirats described collectivisation among the peasantry as follows:

     "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.

     "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.

     "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)."
     [The Anarchist Collectives, p. 112]

   Dolgoff observed that "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." [Op. Cit., p 119fn] Peirats also noted that the collectives
   were "fiercely democratic" as regards decision-making. For example, in
   Ademuz "assemblies were held every Saturday" while in Alcolea de Cinca
   "they were held whenever necessary." [Anarchists in the Spanish
   Revolution, p. 146] Eyewitness Gaston Leval summarised this explosion
   in self-management as follows:

     "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." [The Anarchist Collectives, p
     119fn]

   Work was "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." [Martha A. Ackelsberg in Free Women of Spain, 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:

     "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 cacique [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." [quoted by
     Ackelsberg, Op. Cit., p. 107]

   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:

     "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 Comite . . . [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." [Gaston Leval,
     Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, p. 154]

   The Aragn Federation statues were agreed at its founding congress in
   mid-February 1937 by 500 delegates. These stated that there would be
   "as many county federations" as deemed "necessary for the proper
   running of the collectives" and the Federation would "hold its ordinary
   congress at intervals of six months, in addition to whatever
   extraordinary ones . . . deemed appropriate." New collectives could
   join after "consent in general assembly of the inhabitants of the
   collective". The federation aimed to "coordinate the economic potential
   of the region and . . . be geared towards solidarity in accordance with
   the norms of autonomy and federalism." [quoted by Jose Peirats, The CNT
   in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 240]

   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.

   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: "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."
   [quoted by Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain, p. 357] As we discuss in the
   the [7]next section, this enabled rural Spain to be transformed from
   one marked by poverty and fear into one of increased well-being and
   hope.

I.8.6 What did the agricultural collectives accomplish?

   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: "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." [The Agony of Modernisation, p. 394]
   Another historian, Antony Beevor, notes that "[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." [The Spanish Civil War, p. 95]

   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: "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."
   [quoted by Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain, p. 288] As Beevor suggests,
   "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." [Op. Cit., p. 95] Here are a few examples provided
   by Jose Peirats:

     "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." [The Anarchist Collectives, p. 116]

   Gaston Leval pointed out that "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."
   [Op. Cit., p. 124] To quote Peirats again:

     "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. [Op. Cit., p. 116]

   Peirats summed up the accomplishments of the agricultural collectives
   as follows:

     "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.)." [Op. Cit., p. 114]

   Leval emphasised the following achievements (among others):

     "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." [Op. Cit., pp. 166-167]

   Collectivisation, as Graham Kelsey notes, "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." [Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and
   the State, p. 169] Martha A. Ackelsberg sums up the experience well:

     "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." [The Free Women of Spain,
     pp. 106-7]

   As well as this inter-collective solidarity, the rural collectives also
   supplied food to the front-line troops:

     "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.

     "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." [Jose Peirats, The Anarchist Collectives, p. 120]

   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.

I.8.7 Were the rural collectives created by force?

   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: "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." ["Introduction", Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish
   Revolution, p. 11] Here we shall present evidence to refute claims that
   the rural collectives were created by force.

   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.

   One historian, Ronald Fraser, seems to imply that collectives were
   imposed upon the Aragn population. As he put it, the
   "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." Notice
   that he does not suggest that the anarchist militia actually imposed
   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 "[o]bligatory
   collectivisation was justified, in some libertarians' eyes, by a
   reasoning closer to war communism than to libertarian communism." 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
   some CNT militia leaders justified "[f]orced collectivisation" 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. [Blood of
   Spain, 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!

   Thus Fraser's attempts to paint the Aragn collectives as a form of
   "war communism" imposed upon the population by the CNT and obligatory
   for all fails to co-incidence with the evidence he presents.

   Fraser states that "[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." [Op. Cit., 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 "coercive climate" in Aragn at the time.
   Of course a civil war against fascism would produce a "coercive
   climate" 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:

     "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." [quoted
     in Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 146]

   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.

   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 "had undoubtedly been pressure,
   and no doubt force was used on some occasions in the fervour after the
   rising") just stated the obvious when he wrote that "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." [The Spanish Civil War, 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:

     "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." [Graham Kelsey, "Anarchism in Aragn,"
     pp. 60-82, Spain in Conflict 1931-1939, Martin Blinkhorn (ed.), p.
     61]

   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.

   The voluntary nature of the collectives is again emphasised by the
   number of collectives which allowed people to remain outside. There
   "were few villages which were completely collectivised." [Beevor, Op.
   Cit., p. 94] One eye-witness in Aragn, an anarchist schoolteacher,
   noted that the forcing of smallholders into a collective "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." [quoted by Fraser, Op. Cit., 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.

   So, only around 20 were "total" collectives (out of 450) and around 30%
   of the population felt safe enough not 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:
   "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."
   [Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State, p. 198]

   In his account of the rural revolution, Burnett Bolloten noted that it
   "embraced more than 70 percent of the population" in liberated Aragn
   and that "many of the 450 collectives of the region were largely
   voluntary" although "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." [The Spanish Civil War, p. 74] This, it
   should be noted, was not denied by anarchists. As Gaston Leval pointed
   out, "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."
   [Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, p. 90]

   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: "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." [Op. Cit., p.
   63] Both were mass organisations and supported collectivisation.

   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 "the collective system of agriculture
   threaten[ed] to drain the rural labour market of wage workers." [Op.
   Cit., 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:

     "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."
     [quoted by Bolloten, Op. Cit., p. 71]

   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:

     "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." [Op. Cit., p. 347]

   Fraser implies that the revolution was mostly imported into Aragn from
   Catalonia. However, as he himself notes, the CNT column leaders (except
   Durruti) "opposed" 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 false.
   Fraser states that in "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." [Op. Cit., 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 "authentic peasant base of the CNT . . . lay in Aragn."
   CNT growth in Zaragoza "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." [Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, p. 203]

   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 "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" the existence of "agrarian unrest" also played an important
   role in that growth. This all lead to the "revitalisation of the CNT
   network in Aragn". So by 1936, the CNT had built upon the "foundations
   laid in 1933" and "had finally succeeded in translating the very great
   strength of the urban trade-union organisation in Zaragoza into a
   regional network of considerable extent." [Op. Cit., pp. 80-81, p. 82
   and p. 134]

   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
   caciques):

     "Local landowners and small industrialists, the caciques 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." ["Anarchism in Aragn", Op. Cit., p. 62]

   A CNT activist indicated the power of these bosses and how difficult it
   was to be a union member in Aragn:

     "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." [quoted by Kelsey, Op. Cit.,
     p. 74]

   However, while there were some successes in organising rural unions,
   even in 1931 "propaganda campaigns which led to the establishment of
   scores of village trade-union cells, were followed by a
   counter-offensive from village caciques which forced them to close."
   [Op. Cit. p. 67] Even in the face of this repression the CNT grew and
   "from the end of 1932" there was "a successful expansion of the
   anarchosyndicalist movement into several parts of the region where
   previously it had never penetrated." [Kesley, Anarchosyndicalism,
   Libertarian Communism and the State, p. 185] This growth was built upon
   in 1936, with increased rural activism which had slowly eroded the
   power of the caciques (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 "dramatic growth in
   rural anarcho-syndicalist support" in the six weeks after the general
   election. This "was emphasised" in the Aragn CNT's April congress's
   agenda and it was decided to direct "attention to rural problems" while
   the agreed programme was "exactly what was to happen four months later
   in liberated Aragn." 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,
   "Anarchism in Aragn", Op. Cit., pp. 75-76]

   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 Heraldo de Aragn visited
   lower Aragn in the summer of 1935 and noted "[t]he hunger in many
   homes, where the men are not working, is beginning to encourage the
   youth to subscribe to misleading teachings." [quoted by Kesley, Op.
   Cit., p. 74] Little wonder, then, the growth in CNT membership and
   social struggle Kesley indicates:

     "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." [Op. Cit., p. 76]

   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):

   "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." [Kesley, Op. Cit., p. 61]

   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, "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". [Op. Cit., 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, "it was
   precisely those areas which had most important in December 1933" which
   were in 1936 "seeking to create a new pattern of economic and social
   organisation, to form the basis of libertarian Aragn."
   [Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State, p. 161]

   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: "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." [Kesley, Op. Cit., p. 184]

   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 "were not economic terms or social principles
   enforced upon a hostile population by special teams of urban
   anarchosyndicalists." [Op. Cit., p. 161] This is not to suggest that
   there were no examples of people joining collectives involuntarily
   because of the "coercive climate" 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.

   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 "stressed that no one was to be maltreated"). Within
   the collective, self-management was the rule and one member recalled
   that "[o]nce the work groups were established on a friendly basis and
   worked their own lands, everyone got on well enough." "There was no
   need for coercion, no need for discipline and punishment . . . A
   collective wasn't a bad idea at all." [Fraser, Op. Cit., p. 360] This
   collective, like the vast majority, was voluntary and democratic: "I
   couldn't oblige him to join; we weren't living under a dictatorship."
   [quoted by Fraser, Op. Cit., p. 362] In other words, no force was used
   to create the collective and the collective was organised by local
   people directly.

   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, "[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." [Op. Cit., 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.

   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.

   In October 1937, the Communist-controlled Regional Delegation of
   Agrarian Reform acknowledged that "in the majority of villages
   agricultural work was paralysed causing great harm to our agrarian
   economy." 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, "labour in the fields was
   suspended almost entirely, and a quarter of the land had not been
   prepared at the time for sowing." At a meeting of the agrarian
   commission of the Aragnese Communist Party (October 9th, 1937), Silva
   emphasised "the little incentive to work of the entire peasant
   population" and that the situation brought about by the dissolution of
   the collectives was "grave and critical." [quoted by Bolloten, Op.
   Cit., p. 530] Jose Peirats explained the reasons for this economic
   collapse as a result of popular boycott:

     "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." [Anarchists in the
     Spanish Revolution, p. 258]

   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:

     "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." ["Communismo Libertario" and Communalism in the
     Spanish Collectivisations (1936-1939), pp. 53-4]

   Even in the face of Communist repression, most of the collectives kept
   going. This, if nothing else, proves that the collectives were popular
   institutions. "Through the widespread reluctance of collectivists to
   co-operate with the new policy," Oved argues, "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" [Op. Cit., p. 54]

   Jose Peirats summed up the situation after the communist attack on the
   collectives and the legalisation of the collectives as follows:

     "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." [Op. Cit., p. 258]

   While the collectives had existed, there was a 20% increase in
   production (and this is compared to the pre-war harvest which had been
   "a good crop" [Fraser, Op. Cit.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.

   So, overall, the evidence suggests that the Aragn collectives, like
   their counterparts in the Levante, Catalonia and so on, were popular
   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 false. While acts of violence did occur and some acts of
   coercion did take place (against CNT policy, we may add) these were the
   exceptions to the rule. Bolloten's summary best fits the facts:

     "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." [Op. Cit., p. 78]

I.8.8 But did the Spanish collectives innovate?

   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:

     "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.

     "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." [Anarchist Collectives, p. 153]

   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 ([8]section I.4.10).
   Another example was the baking industry. Souchy reported that, "[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." [Op. Cit., p. 82]
   In Granollers, the syndicate "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." 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.
   "Socialisation went hand in hand with rationalisation." [Gaston Leval,
   Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, p. 287] For more see
   [9]sectionI.8.6 as well as [10]section C.2.8 (in which we present more
   examples when refuting the charge that workers' control would stifle
   innovation).

   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
   and 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:

     "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." [Op. Cit.,
     p. 347]

   Therefore the actual experiences of self-management in Spain supports
   the points made in [11]section I.4.11. 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.

   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.

I.8.9 Why, if it was so good, did it not survive?

   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.

   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.

   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 [12]next section). 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 "Friends of Durruti"
   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 [13]section I.8.12).

   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 Lessons of the Spanish Revolution
   and, in part, in such works as Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution by
   Jose Peirats, Anarchist Organisation: The History of the FAI by Juan
   Gomaz Casas and Durruti in the Spanish Revolution by Abel Paz as well
   as in a host of pamphlets and articles written by anarchists ever
   since.

   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:

     "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 . . ." [quoted
     by Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain, p. 394]

   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.

I.8.10 Why did the CNT collaborate with the state?

   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 "Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias"
   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 [14]section I.8.13).

   The question must arise, why 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 anarchists rather than of
   anarchism, 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, "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." [Lessons of the Spanish
   Revolution, p. 14]

   So, why did 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 mis-using
   anarchist theory.

   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 International Workers Association made clear:

     "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." [quoted
     by Jose Peirats, Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, p. 180]

   Anarchist historian Jose Peirats noted that according to the report
   "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." [Op. Cit., p. 179] In the words of the CNT report itself:

     "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." [quoted by Robert
     Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, vol. 2, p. 1156]

   Moreover, as Gaston Leval later argued, given that the "general
   preoccupation" of the majority of the population was "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." Implementing an
   anarchist revolution would, in all likelihood, also result in "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." [The Anarchist
   Collectives, p. 52 and p. 53]

   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 if 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) plus those sections in Catalonia which supported
   the republic is rarely mentioned. Moreover, when the decision to
   collaborate was made it was immediately after the defeat of the army
   uprising in Barcelona -- 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:

     "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.

     "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." [We, the Anarchists!, p. 99]

   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:

     "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." [quoted by Christie, Op. Cit., p. 109]

   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 experience 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:

     "For us it is a matter of crushing Fascism once and for all. Yes,
     and in spite of the Government.

     "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 . . .

     "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.

     "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."

     "You will be sitting on a pile of ruins if you are victorious," said
     [the journalist] van Paasen.

     Durruti answered: "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." [quoted by Vernon
     Richards, Lessons of the Spanish Revolution, pp. 193-4f]

   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:

     "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.

     "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." [quoted by Jose Peirats, Op.
     Cit., pp. 151-2]

   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.

   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 [15]next section, 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.

I.8.11 Was the decision to collaborate a product of anarchist theory?

   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:

     "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.

     "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." [Pat Stack, "Anarchy in
     the UK?", Socialist Review, no. 246]

   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 "material
   conditions" 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 after 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 ignored 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.

   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 [16]last
   section, 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 as well as 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.

   As such, the real choice facing the CNT was not "between leaving the
   state intact . . . or building a workers' government in Catalonia which
   could act as a focal point for the defeat of Franco" 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 or immediately implement libertarian communism
   and possibly face a conflict on two fronts, against Franco and 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 Central Committee of
   Anti-Fascist Militias. To downplay these objective factors and the
   dilemma they provoked and instead simply blame the decision on
   anarchist politics is a joke.

   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.

   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 opposite to what that theory actually
   recommends!

   So what can be made of Garcia Oliver's argument? As Abel Paz noted
   "[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." [Durruti: The People
   Armed, p. 215]

   For example, when the decision was made, the revolution had not started
   yet. The street fighting had just ended and the Plenum decided "not to
   speak about Libertarian Communism as long as part of Spain was in the
   hands of the fascists." [Mariano R. Vesquez, quoted by Paz, Op. Cit.,
   p. 214] The revolution took place from below in the days following the
   decision, independently of the wishes of the Plenum. In the words of
   Abel Paz:

     "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.

     "Finding the factories deserted, and no instructions from their
     unions, they resolved to operate the machines themselves." [The
     Spanish Civil War, pp. 54-5]

   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 "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" and the "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." [Op.
   Cit., p. 40 and p. 56] As historian Ronald summarises the
   "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." So while the Catalan CNT "had
   'put off' libertarian revolution . . . daily, the revolution in
   Barcelona was taking root in CNT collectives and union-run industries."
   [Blood of Spain, p. 139 and p. 179]

   As the revolution had not yet begun and the CNT Plenum had decided not
   to call for its start, it is difficult to see how "libertarian
   communism" (i.e. the revolution) could "lead to the strangulation of
   the revolution" (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
   after Franco was defeated just as much as on July 20th, 1936.

   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, "the foundation of this
   administration will be the Commune" which is "autonomous" and
   "federated at regional and national levels." The commune "will
   undertake to adhere to whatever general norms [that] may be agreed by
   majority vote after free debate." [quoted by Jose Peirats, The CNT in
   the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 106] It stressed the free nature of
   society aimed at by the CNT:

     "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."
     [quoted by Peirats, Op. Cit., p. 107]

   Hardly a picture of "anarchist dictatorship"! Indeed, it is far more
   democratic than the capitalist state Oliver described as "democracy."
   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 "anarchist dictatorship" and less democratic than the capitalist
   Republic he had been fighting against between 1931 and 1936! Moreover,
   libertarian communism inspired the revolution and so to reject it in
   favour of capitalist democracy to stop "the strangulation of the
   revolution" makes no sense.

   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.

   This can clearly been seen from the report made by the CNT to the
   International Workers Association to justify the decision to forget
   anarchist theory and collaborate with bourgeois parties and join the
   government. The report states that "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." [quoted by Robert Alexander,
   The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, 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 ignoring 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 before the
   start of the war.

   According to anarchist ideas, to quote Bakunin, "the revolution must
   set out from the first to radically and totally destroy the State" and
   that the "natural and necessary consequence of this destruction" will
   include the "dissolution of army, magistracy, bureaucracy, police and
   priesthood" as well as the "confiscation of all productive capital and
   means of production on behalf of workers' associations, who are to put
   them to use". The state would be replaced by "the federative Alliance
   of all working men's associations" which "will constitute the Commune."
   These communes, in turn, would "constitute the federation of insurgent
   associations . . . and organise a revolutionary force capable of
   defeating reaction." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, pp. 170-1]
   For Kropotkin, the "Commune . . . must break the State and replace it
   by the Federation." [Words of a Rebel, p. 83]

   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 not 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.

   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 "seized town halls, raised the black-and-red flags of
   the CNT, and declared communismo liberatario." In Tarassa, the same
   year, the workers again "seiz[ed] town halls" and the town was "swept
   by street fighting." The revolt in January 1933 began with "assaults by
   Anarchist action groups . . . on Barcelona's military barracks . . .
   Serious fighting occurred in working-class barrios and the outlying
   areas of Barcelona . . . Uprising occurred in Tarassa,
   Sardanola-Ripollet, Lerida, in several pueblos in Valencia province,
   and in Andalusia." In December 1933, the workers "reared barricades,
   attacked public buildings, and engaged in heavy street fighting . . .
   many villages declared libertarian communism." [Murray Bookchin, The
   Spanish Anarchists, p. 225, p. 226, p. 227 and p. 238]

   It seems that the CNT leadership's loyalty to "its ideals and its
   purely anarchist nature" which necessitated "not attack[ing] the forms
   of the State" was a very recent development!

   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 "Workers' Alliance" 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, "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." [Abel Paz, Durruti in the Spanish
   Revolution, p. 462]

   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.

   The role of anarchists, therefore, was that of "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"
   and "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." This would
   involve "seeking to destroy bourgeois institutions through the creation
   of revolutionary organisms." [Vernon Richards, Lessons of the Spanish
   Revolution, 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.

   Indeed, such an organisation already existing in embryo in the CNT's
   barrios defence committees which had led and co-ordinated the struggle
   against the military coup throughout Barcelona. "The Neighbourhood
   Committees, which had diverse names but all shared a libertarian
   outlook, federated and created a revolutionary Local Co-ordination
   Committee." They "became Revolutionary Committees and formed what was
   called the 'Federation of Barricades.' It was the Committees that held
   power in Barcelona that evening." [Paz, Op. Cit., 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:

     "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." [Paz, Op. Cit., pp. 450-1]

   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, "the federal Alliance of all working
   men's associations" which would "constitute the Commune" and complement
   the "federation of the barricades." [Op. Cit., 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 did see this genuinely libertarian solution at the time, but
   sadly they were a minority. For example, the members of the Nosotros
   Group, which included Durruti, thought "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." [Paz, Op. Cit., 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.

   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 did 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.

   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 [17]next section, that
   anti-fascist unity would have prevailed and so the some decision would
   have been reached.

   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.

   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 "Let us first make sure of
   victory, and then see what can be done":

     "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 to
     consolidate the Commune by the social revolution!" [Words of a
     Rebel, p. 97]

   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 "had to build a new world to secure and defend their
   victory." [Op. Cit., p. 451]). Kropotkin also indicated the inevitable
   effects of the CNT's actions in co-operating with the state and joining
   representative bodies:

     "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." [Op. Cit., pp. 97-8]

   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,
   "there can be no excuse" for the CNT's decision, as "they were not
   mistakes of judgement but the deliberate abandonment of the principles
   of the CNT." [Op. Cit., 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!

   Moreover, while the experience of Spain confirms anarchist theory
   negatively, it also confirms it positively 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 "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." After a CNT regional assembly militants decided to "form
   the Aragn Defence Council and the Aragn Federation of Collectives."
   [Paz, Op. Cit., pp. 540-1] This exposes as false the claim that
   anarchism failed during the Spanish Civil War. In Aragn, the CNT did
   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.

   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 did 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.

   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 was 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 "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." [Vision on Fire, p. 299]

   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.

   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 Friends of Durruti (FoD). In the words of Pat Stack:

     "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." [Op. Cit.]

   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 "conscious break" with anarchism, it signified a
   conscious return to it. This can be clearly seen when we compare their
   arguments to those of Bakunin. As noted by Stack, the FoD argued for
   "juntas" in the overthrow of capitalism and to defend against
   counter-revolution. Yet this was exactly what revolutionary anarchists
   have argued for since Bakunin (see [18]section H.2.1 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.

   As such, the failure of the Spanish anarchists was not the "stark
   choice" between "workers' power" and "capitalist power" 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:

     "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." [Op. Cit.]

   As a useful antidote to these claims, we need simply quote Trotsky on
   what the Spanish anarchists should have done. In his words: "Because
   the leaders of the CNT renounced dictatorship for themselves they left
   the place open for the Stalinist dictatorship." Hardly an example of
   "workers' power"! Or, as he put it earlier in the same year, a
   "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."
   Ultimately, it was the case that the failure of the Spanish Revolution
   confirmed for Trotsky the truism that the "revolutionary dictatorship
   of a proletarian party . . . is an objective necessity . . . The
   revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship
   surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution." Rather than seeing,
   as anarchist do, workers' councils as being key, Trotsky considered the
   party, in fact the "dictatorship of a party", as being the decisive
   factor. [our emphasis, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1936-37, 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 [19]section
   H.3.8).

   Clearly, the leading Marxist at the time was not arguing for the
   "centrality of the working class under the leadership of a political
   party." He was arguing for the dictatorship of a "revolutionary" party
   over 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 "victory" is possible when the party has
   dictatorial power over the working class and the "sovereign ruler" 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.

   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.

   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 not applying our ideas whole, while, in Russia, it was due
   to the Bolsheviks applying 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 [20]section H.6, the notion that "objective circumstances"
   explains Bolshevik tyranny is simply unconvincing, particularly given
   the role Bolshevik ideology played in this process.

   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 confirmed rather than refuted
   anarchist theory as they led to the defeat of both the revolution and
   the civil war.

I.8.12 Was the decision to collaborate imposed on the CNT's membership?

   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 before that date. Both
   organisations became more centralised and bureaucratic, with the
   membership excluded from many major decisions. As Peirats suggested:

     "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.

     "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." [The CNT in the
     Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 213]

   In other words, the CNT had become increasingly hierarchical, with the
   higher committees becoming transformed into executive bodies rather
   than administrative ones as "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."
   [Jose Peirats, Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, p. 188]

   Ironically, rather than the "anarchist leaders" of the CNT failing to
   "seize power" as Trotsky and his followers lament (see [21]last
   section), they did -- in their own organisations. 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
   Lessons of the Spanish Revolution). While it is true that the
   committees presented many decisions as a fait accompli the
   rank-and-file of the CNT and FAI did not simply follow orders nor
   ratify all of the decisions blindly.

   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.

   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 "anti-fascist unity" 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.

   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
   "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." [quoted by
   Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 183] In the
   words of Peirats:

     "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." [Op. Cit., p. 181]

   And:

     "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." [Op. Cit., p. 210]

   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, "Translator's Note", Juan Gomez Casas, Anarchist
   Organisation: The History of the FAI, p. 10]

   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 were presented as
   fait accompli 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 any 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.

   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 "Central Committee of Anti-Fascist
   Militias" 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).

   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.

   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.

   As we argued in [22]section I.8.11, 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 more 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.

   Therefore, in spite of a sizeable minority of anarchists within 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.

I.8.13 What political lessons were learned from the revolution?

   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 "revolution that stops
   half-way is sure to be soon defeated." [The Great French Revolution,
   vol. 2, p. 553]

   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:

     "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 consult the rank and file and expose the real situation to the
     workers. Companys backed down." [our emphasis, Abel Paz, Durruti:
     The People Armed, p. 216]

   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 Central
   Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, 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 "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." [Emma Goldman, Vision on Fire,
   pp. 100-1]

   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: "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." [We, the Anarchists!, pp. 99-100] Without such a
   federation, it was only a matter of time before the CNT joined the
   bourgeois government.

   Rather than being "a regime of dual power" and the "most important" of
   the "new organs of power" as many Trotskyists, following Felix Morrow,
   maintain, the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias created on
   July 20th, 1936, was, in fact, an organ of class collaboration and a
   handicap to the revolution. [Revolution and Counter-Revolution in
   Spain, p. 85 and p. 83] Stuart Christie was correct to call it an
   "artificial and hybrid creation," a "compromise, an artificial
   political solution, an officially sanctioned appendage of the
   Generalidad government" which "drew the CNT-FAI leadership inexorably
   into the State apparatus, until then its principal enemy." [Op. Cit.,
   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) "the social (and, by consequence,
   anti-political) power of the working masses." [Michael Bakunin:
   Selected Writings, pp. 197-8]

   Therefore, the CNT forgot a basic principle of anarchism, namely "the
   destruction . . . of the States." Instead, like the Paris Commune, the
   CNT thought that "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." The real basis of the revolution, the basic
   principle of anarchism, was that the "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." [Bakunin, Op. Cit., 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.

   Of course, if a full plenum of CNT unions and barrios 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.

   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 "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." [The Anarchist Collectives, p. 40]
   Without creating a means to organise the "social power" of the working
   class, the CNT was defenceless against these parties once the state had
   re-organised itself.

   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 war 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.

   Garcia Oliver (the first ever, and hopefully last, "anarchist" minister
   of justice) stated in 1937 that collaboration was necessary and that
   the CNT had "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" Companys (who had in the past jailed anarchists).
   [quoted by Vernon Richards, Lessons of the Spanish Revolution, p. 34]
   Which means that only by working with the state, politicians and
   capitalists can an anarchist revolution be truly libertarian!
   Furthermore:

     "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 . . .

     "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." [Richards, Op. Cit., p. 42]

   The dilemma of "anarchist dictatorship" or "collaboration" 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:

     "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." [Anarchist
     Organisation: the History of the FAI, p. 188f]

   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 Central Committee of Anti-Fascist
   Militias. 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 [23]next section).

   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 apply 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.

   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
   [24]section H.7.4, 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 libertarian thing ever.

   As the Friends of Durruti argued a "revolution requires the absolute
   domination of the workers' organisations." ["The Friends of Durruti
   accuse", Class War on the Home Front, 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 [25]section H.1.4). 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, "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." [Op. Cit., p. 251]

   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: "Democracy
   defeated the Spanish people, not Fascism." [Op. Cit., p. 30] To be
   opposed to fascism is not enough, you also have to be anti-capitalist.
   As Durruti stressed, "[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." [quoted by Vernon
   Richards, Op. Cit., p. 193f] In Spain, anti-fascism destroyed the
   revolution, not fascism. As the Scottish Anarchist Ethel McDonald
   argued at the time: "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." [Workers Free Press,
   October 1937]

   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 for 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.

   Fourthly, the role of anarchists in a social revolution is to always
   encourage organisation "from below" (to use one of Bakunin's favourite
   expressions), revolutionary organisations which can effectively smash
   the state. Bakunin himself argued (see [26]section I.8.11) 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.

   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.

I.8.14 What economic lessons were learned from the revolution?

   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.

   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 "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." [The Anarchist Collectives,
   p. 32] The workers, freed from economic autocracy, started to transform
   their workplaces and how the produced goods.

   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 "[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." [The Ego and Its Own, p.
   312] A fact Emma Goldman confirmed from her visits to collectives and
   discussions with their members:

     "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."
     [Vision on Fire, p. 62]

   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 "their thesis in favour of
   private property against all other forms of possession, 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." [The Conquest of Bread, p. 146]

   Beyond this five important lessons can be derived from the actual
   experience of a libertarian socialist economy:

   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 [27]section I.2.2).
   The collectives although, as mentioned in [28]section I.8.3, 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.

   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 for
   people. The Spanish Revolution is a clear example of this, with the
   Catalan state's "collectivisation decree" 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
   "revolution should not only be made for the people's sake; it should
   also be made by the people." [No Gods, No Masters, 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.

   Secondly, the importance of decentralisation of management. As
   discussed in [29]section I.8.4, 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).

   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 "was actively using its control
   of finances to contain and stifle radical change" [Graham Kesley,
   Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State, 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).

   This attack on the revolution started when the Catalan State issued a
   decree legalising (and so controlling) the collectives in October 1936
   (the infamous "Collectivisation Decree"). 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, "the decree had the baneful effect of preventing the
   workers' syndicates from extending their gains. It set back the
   revolution in industry." [The Anarchist Collectives, p. 54]

   And lastly, that an economic revolution can only succeed if the
   existing state is destroyed. As Kropotkin argued, "a new form of
   economic organisation will necessarily require a new form of political
   structure." [Anarchism, 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 politically, it was lost economically.
   The decree "legalising" collectivisation "distorted everything right
   from the start." [Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, p. 227]
   This helped undermine the revolution by ensuring that the mutualism of
   the collectives did not develop freely into libertarian communism ("The
   collectives lost the economic freedom they had won at the beginning"
   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
   "policy was thus not the same as that pursued by the decree." [quoted
   by Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain, p. 230 and p. 213] Indeed, leading
   anarchists like Abad de Santilln opposed it:

     "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." [quoted by Fraser, Op. Cit., p. 212fn]

   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.

   Yet these points do not diminish the successes of the Spanish
   revolution. As Gaston Leval argued, "in spite of these shortcomings"
   caused lack of complete socialisation "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." [Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, p. 228] Beyond
   doubt, these months of economic liberty in Spain show not only that
   libertarian socialism works 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.

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/append32.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI5.html#seci512
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI3.html#seci31
   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI3.html#seci35
   5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci84
   6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech25
   7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci86
   8. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI4.html#seci410
   9. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci86
  10. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secC2.html#secc28
  11. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI4.html#seci411
  12. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci810
  13. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci812
  14. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci813
  15. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci811
  16. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci810
  17. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci812
  18. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech21
  19. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech38
  20. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html
  21. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci811
  22. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci811
  23. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci814
  24. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH4.html#sech47
  25. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech14
  26. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci811
  27. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI2.html#seci22
  28. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci83
  29. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI8.html#seci84
