Anarchism
is the political belief that society should have no government, laws,
police, or other authority, but should be a free association of all
its members. William Godwin, an important
anarchist philosopher in Britain during the late 18th century, believed
that the "euthanasia of government" would be achieved through
"individual moral reformation".
The Anarchist
movement in Spain emerged in the 1860s.
At first it main impact was on peasant communities. At the time there
were 550,000 landless labourers whereas 0.1 per cent of the population
owned 33 per cent of all arable land. Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon,
the French anarchist with strong views on the ownership of land, was
one of those whose teachings influenced the views of Spanish peasants.
By the beginning of the
20th century the anarchist movement in Spain was the strongest in
Europe. The main support came from the industrial workers of Barcelona
and in 1911 activists formed the anarcho-syndicalist trade union,
the National Confederation of Trabajo (CNT).
This was in response to the execution of the anarchist Francisco Ferrer.
Although the CNT operated
as a trade union, it also contained subgroups such as Solidarios,
a terrorist group led by Buenaventura
Durruti.
In 1921 Miguel
Primo de Rivera banned the CNT. It now became an underground organization
and in 1927 an inner-core of activist established the Federación
Anarquista Ibérica (FAI). The FAI was strong in Catalonia
and Aragón and members made several unsuccessful attempts to
assassinate Alfonso
XIII.
On
the outbreak of the Civil War anarchists set up the Antifascist
Militias Committee in Barcelona.
The committee
immediately sent Buenaventura
Durruti and 3,000 anarchists to Aragón
in an attempt to take the Nationalist held Saragossa.
In
the first few weeks of the Spanish Civil War
an estimated 100,000 men joined Anarcho-Syndicalists
militias. Anarchists also established the Iron
Column, many of whose 3,000 members were former prisoners. In
Guadalajara, Cipriano
Mera, leader
of the CNT construction workers in Madrid,
formed the Rosal Column.
At the beginning of November,
25,000 Nationalist troops under General Jose Varela had reached the
western and southern suburbs of Madrid.
Five days later he was joined by General Hugo
Sperrle and the
Condor
Legion.
This began the siege of Madrid that was to last for nearly three years.
On 14th November
Buenaventura
Durruti
arrived in Madrid from Aragón
with his Anarchist
Brigade.
Six days later Durruti was killed while fighting on the outskirts
of the city. Durruti's supporters in the CNT
claimed that he had been murdered by members of the Communist
Party (PCE).
In September 1936, President
Manuel
Azaña
appointed the left-wing socialist, Francisco
Largo Caballero
as prime minister. Largo Caballero also took over the important role
of war minister. Largo Caballero brought into his government four
anarchist leaders, Juan Garcia Oliver (Justice),
Juan López (Commerce), Federica
Montseny (Health) and Juan Peiró
(Industry). Montseny was the first woman in Spanish history to be
a cabinet minister. Over the next few months Montseny accomplished
a series of reforms that included the introduction of sex education,
family planning and the legalization of abortion.
During
the Spanish Civil War the National
Confederation of Trabajo (CNT), the Federación
Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) and the Worker's
Party (POUM) played an important role in running Barcelona.
This brought them into conflict with other left-wing groups in the
city including the Union General de Trabajadores
(UGT), the Catalan Socialist Party (PSUC)
and the Communist Party (PCE).
On the 3rd May 1937, Rodriguez
Salas, the Chief of Police, ordered the Civil
Guard and the Assault Guard to take
over the Telephone Exchange, which had been operated by the CNT since
the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
Members of the CNT in the Telephone Exchange were armed and refused
to give up the building. Members of the CNT,
FAI and POUM became
convinced that this was the start of an attack on them by the UGT,
PSUC and the PCE
and that night barricades were built all over the city.
Fighting broke out on the
4th May. Later that day the anarchist
ministers, Federica Montseny and Juan
Garcia Oliver, arrived in Barcelona and attempted to negotiate
a ceasefire. When this proved to be unsuccessful, Juan
Negrin, Vicente
Uribe and Jesus Hernández
called on Francisco
Largo Caballero to
use government troops to takeover the city. Largo Caballero also came
under pressure from Luis Companys, the
leader of the PSUC, not to take this action, fearing that this would
breach Catalan autonomy.
On 6th May death squads
assassinated a number of prominent anarchists in their homes. The
following day over 6,000 Assault Guards
arrived from Valencia and gradually took
control of Barcelona. It is estimated
that about 400 people were killed during what became known as the
May Riots.
These events in Barcelona
severely damaged the Popular Front government.
Communist members of the Cabinet were highly critical of the way Francisco
Largo Caballero handled
the May Riots. President Manuel
Azaña agreed
and on 17th May he asked Juan Negrin to
form a new government. Federica
Montseny and other anarchist ministers now resigned from the government.
The new Negrin
government now attempted to bring the Anarchist
Brigades under
the control of the Republican Army. At first
the Anarcho-Syndicalists
resisted and attempted
to retain hegemony over their units. This proved impossible when the
government made the decision to only pay and supply militias that
subjected themselves to unified command and structure.
CNT-FAL
units continued to serve together and retained their independence
in the Catalan Army of the East that fought at Belchite
and Teruel.
Anarchists were also prominent in the 149 Brigade, the 64th Division
in the Army of the Levante and the Army of the North.
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(1)
Federación
Anarquista Ibérica,
statement (1927)
It is an inhuman injustice
that a man should keep for himself wealth produced by others or even
a part of the earth which is as sacred to humanity as life is for
the individual; because it has its origin in a violent and criminal
exploitation of the stronger against the weaker, creating the odious
existence of parasites, living on the work of others; because it creates
capitalism and the law of salaries which condemns man to a permanent
economic slavery and to economic disequilibrium; because it is the
cause of prostitution, the most infamous and degrading outrage that
society inflicts on the human conscience, condemning woman to make
the object of commerce an act which is both the purest and the most
spiritual known to humans. We are against the state because it restrains
the free unfolding and normal development of ethical, philosophical,
and scientific activities of people and because it is the foundation
of the principles of authority and property through the armed forces,
police and judiciary.
(2)
Roy Campbell, Light on a Dark Horse
(1951)
One noticed, during the restless period that
preceded the 1936 elections, that the working class was divided in
two.
The bootblacks, an enormous class to themselves in Spain, the waiters,
and most of the mechanics, along with the miners and factory workers,
were either anarchists or Reds. It was expected that the anarchists
would abstain from voting: or might even vote for the Right, with
whom, in their liking for liberty, they have more in common than with
the Communists. Amongst the anarchists were to be found some of the
most generous idealistic people, at the same time as the real "phonys"
- like the ones that dug up the cemetery in Huesca,
held parades of naked nuns, and out-babooned in atrocity anything
I had ever read of before. But they were warm-blooded - unlike their
ice-cold compéres, the "commies", who were less human.
You could beg your life from an anarchist. It was not long before
most of the anarchists wished they had gone Right for they were unmercifully
massacred by their Red Comrades.
(3)
Ilya
Ehrenburg, letter
sent to Marcel Rosenberg (30th September,
1936)
Undoubtedly one of the
main tasks is to attract to the revolution's side, at this stage,
the healthier elements from among the anarchists. It is characteristic
that in the last conversation that I had with Galarza, the minister
of the interior (a Socialist), he mentioned that his attempt at cooperation
with the anarchist labor federation had produced positive results,
and that lately several of the confederation leaders had begun to
recognize that many alien elements were interspersed among their members.
One of the anarchists' "idols," who provokes great doubts
of a nonideological sort, is Juan Lopez, who is now the boss of Valencia.
(4)
Cyril
Connolly, New
Statesman (21st November 1936)
It is in Barcelona that
the full force of the anarchist revolution becomes apparent. Their
initials, CNT and FAI, are everywhere. They have taken over all the
hotels, restaurants, cafes, trains, taxis, and means of communication,
as well as all theatres, cinemas, and places of amusement. Their first
act was to abolish the tip as being incompatible with the dignity
of those who receive it, and to attempt to give one is the only act,
short of making the Fascist salute, that a foreigner can be disliked
for.
Spanish anarchism is a
doctrine which has gone through three stages. The first was the conception
of pure anarchy which grew out of the writings of Rousseau, Proudhon,
Godwin, and to a lesser extent, Diderot and Tolstoy. The essence of
this anarchist faith is that there exists in mankind a natural trend
towards nobility and dignity; human relations based on a love of liberty
combined with a desire to help each other (as shown for instance in
the mutual generosity of the poor in slum districts in cases of sickness
and distress) should in themselves be enough, given education and
the right economic conditions, to provide a working basis for people
to live on; State interference, armies, property, would be as superfluous
as they were to the early Christians. The anarchist paradise would
be one in which the instincts towards freedom, justice, intelligence
and "bondad" in the human race develop gradually to the
exclusion of all thoughts of personal gain, envy, and malice. But
there exist two stumbling blocks to this ideal - the desire to make
money and the desire to acquire power. Everybody who makes money or
acquires power, according to the anarchists, does so to the detriment
of himself and at the expense of other people, and as long as these
instincts are allowed free run there will always be war, tyranny,
and exploitation. Power and money must therefore be abolished altogether.
At this point the second stage of anarchism begins, that which arises
from the thought of Bakunin, the contemporary of Marx. He added the
rider that the only way to abolish power and money was by direct action
on the bourgeoisie in whom these instincts were incurably ingrained,
and who took advantage of all liberal legislation, all concessions
from the workers, to get more power and more money for themselves.
"The rich will do everything for the poor but get off their backs,"
Tolstoy has said. "Then they must be blown off," might have
been Bakunin's corollary. From this time (the Eighties) dates militant
anarchism with its crimes of violence and assassination. In most of
its strongholds, Italy, Germany, Russia, it was either destroyed by
Fascism or absorbed by Communism, which has usually seemed more practical,
realisable, and adaptable to industrial countries; but in Spain the
innate love of individual freedom, a personal dignity of the people,
made them prefer it to Russian Communism, and the persecution
which it underwent was never sufficient to blot it out.
Finally, in the last few
years it has gone through a third transformation; in spite of its
mystical appeal to the heart anarchism has always been an elastic
and adaptable faith, and looking round for a suitable machinery to
replace State centralisation it found syndicalism, to which it is
now united. Syndicalism is a system of vertical rather than horizontal
Trade Unions, by which, for instance, all the workers on this paper,
editors, reviewers, printers and distributors, would delegate members
to a syndicate which would negotiate with other syndicates for the
housing, feeding, amusements, etc., of all the body. This anarcho-syndicalism
through its organ, the CNT, has been able to get control of all the
industries and agriculture of Catalonia and much of that in Andalusia,
Valencia and Murcia, forming a more or less solid block from Malaga
to the French frontier with considerable power also in the Asturias
and Madrid. The executive militant spearhead of the body is the Federacion
Anarquistica Iberica, usually pronounced as one word, FAI, which partly
owing to acts of terrorism, partly to its former illegality, is clothed
in mystery today. It is almost impossible to find out who and how
many belong to it.
The ideal of the CNT and
the FAI is libertarian Communism, a Spain in which the work and wealth
is shared by all, about three hours' work a day being enough to entitle
anyone to sufficient food, clothing, education, amusement, transport,
and medical attention. It differs from Communism because there must
be no centralisation, no bureaucracy, and no leaders; if somebody
does not want to do something, the anarchists argue, no good will
come of making them do it. They point to Stalin's dictatorship as
an example of the evils inherent in Communism. The danger of anarchism,
one might argue, is that it has become such a revolutionary weapon
that it may never know what to do with the golden age when it has
it, and may exhaust itself in a perpetual series of counter-revolutions.
Yet it should be an ideal not unsympathetic to the English, who have
always honoured freedom and individual eccentricity and whose liberalism
and whiggery might well have turned to something very similar had
they been harassed for centuries, like the Spanish proletariat, by
absolute monarchs, militant clergy, army dictatorships and absentee
landlords.
(5)
Edward
Knoblaugh,
Correspondent in Spain (1937)
I made a tour of the Barcelona churches and
Rightist centers which the Left extremists had pillaged and burned
since my previous visit. A large number of churches and convents
had been destroyed during the demonstrations following the Left election
victory in February. The work of destruction had been completed during
the week preceding my arrival. Only the blackened walls remained of
the historic religious buildings. The statues and paintings had been
destroyed or removed, the altars ripped out, the stained-glass windows
broken. The burial vaults in the floors of some of the churches had
been forced open and the century-old mummified bodies of nuns and
priests had been removed from their mouldy resting-places. On the
steps of the Carmelite church were arrayed a dozen or more of the
skeletons of nuns in standing and reclining postures.
The red and black flag
of the Anarchists was everywhere - hung from balconies, suspended
from cords strung across
the thoroughfares and fastened to sticks wired to the fronts of commandeered
automobiles. No attempt was being made to police the city. Scowling
through their week-old beards, the militia, dressed in blue overalls
or simply in denim trousers and dirty shirts, with red and black neckerchiefs
about their throats, were as thick as flies. Lounging here
and there or speeding through the streets in their requisitioned private
cars with the black snouts of submachine guns protruding over the
window sills, these Catalonian Anarchists looked fierce enough to
startle even the directors of a Hollywood mob scene. Occasionally
a shot was heard as a rifle in inexperienced hands was discharged.
(6)
Ethel
MacDonald, News
From Spain (1937)
There
is no doubt that the magnificent struggle of the Spanish workers challenges
the entire theory and historical interpretation of parliamentary socialism.
The civil war is a living proof of the futility and worthlessness
of parliamentary democracy as a medium of social
change. It clearly demonstrates that there is but one way, the way
of direct action. And that but one class can make the change - the
working class. Social democracy has lived too long. It is said Spain
has
killed it. And now it is merely necessary that the corrupted body
be burned.
The struggle in Spain
is maintained by the Anarchists and without the Anarchists the war
would have been lost for the workers before this. And it is because
of this fact that the Socialists, and those who call themselves Socialists,
refuse to have anything to do with the Spanish Revolution. It is true
that those persons organise collections for the poor children of Madrid
who have lost their parents as the result of barbarous bombardments,
and it is true that those persons are collecting clothes and food
and dispatching them to Madrid. But that is all. The Spanish conflict
is regarded as a case for charity, something on the same footing as
the poor of the Salvation Army. This is typical of the social democrats.
It exposes them clearly as petty bourgeoisie with hearts that beat
warmly for the poor starving children of Madrid. But speak to them
about the revolution and they gooseflesh all over. To them revolution
is illegal and unlawful, and as good law abiding citizens and subjects,
they refuse to have any association with it. That is the treachery
that is perpetrated on the working-class by those individuals
and parties. They claim to be socialists and with that label attached
to them they seduce the working-class.
(7)
George
Orwell,
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Roughly
speaking,
the C.N.T.-F.A.I. stood for: (1) Direct control over industry by the
workers engaged in each industry, e.g. transport, the textile factories,
etc.; (2) Government by local committees and resistance to all forms
of centralized authoritarianism; (3) Uncompromising hostility to the
bourgeoisie and the Church. The last point, though the least precise,
was the most important.
The Anarchists were the
opposite of the majority of so-called revolutionaries in so much that
though their principles were rather vague their hatred of privilege
and injustice was perfectly genuine. Philosophically, Communism and
Anarchism are poles apart. Practically - i.e. in the form of society
aimed at - the difference is mainly one of emphasis, but it is quite
irreconcilable. The Communist's emphasis is always on centralism and
efficiency, the Anarchist's on liberty and equality.
Anarchism is deeply rooted
in Spain and is likely to outlive Communism when the Russian influence
is withdrawn. During the first two months of the war it was the Anarchists
more than anyone else who had saved the situation, and much later
than this the Anarchist militia, in spite of their indiscipline, were
notoriously the best fighters among the purely Spanish forces.
From about February 1937
onwards the Anarchists and the P.O.U.M. could to some extent be lumped
together. If the Anarchists, the P.O.U.M. and the Left wing of the
Socialists had had the sense to combine at the start and press a realistic
policy, the history of the war might have been different. But in the
early period, when the revolutionary parties seemed to have the game
in their hands, this was impossible. Between the Anarchists and the
Socialists there were ancient jealousies, the P.O.U.M., as Marxists,
were sceptical of Anarchism, while from the pure Anarchist standpoint
the 'Trotskyism' of the P.O.U.M. was not much preferable to the 'Stalinism'
of the Communists. Nevertheless the Communist tactics tended to drive
the two parties together. When the P.O.U.M. joined in the disastrous
fighting in Barcelona in May, it was mainly from an instinct to stand
by the C.N.T., And later, when the P.O.U.M. Was suppressed, the Anarchists
were the only people who dared to raise a voice in its defence.
So, roughly speaking,
the alignment of forces was this. On the one side the C.N.T.-F.A.I.,
the P.O.U.M., And a section of the Socialists, standing for workers'
control: on the other side the Right-wing Socialists, Liberals, and
Communists, standing for centralized government and a militarized
army.
(8)
Annie
Murray,
Voices From the Spanish Civil War (1986)
We mixed with the population in Barcelona and
of course the people we met and most of the people in Barcelona in
fact seemed to be against the Fascists. I knew there was fighting
in Barcelona itself in the summer of 1937 between the P.O.U.M., the
Anarchists and the Communists. But we were so busy in the hospital
we didn't see much of the outside life really. Oh, I knew the Anarchists!
They would shoot anybody if they thought they were well off. Yes,
they would just take them round the corner. You could hear the shots
sometimes. They weren't very scientific in their approach, you know.
We had them working in the hospitals and everything. They were a part
of the International Brigade actually. But as I say they weren't very
scientific in their approach to the whole cause. Nice enough blokes
but they would shoot somebody if they thought they were well off-
even just by the
way they were dressed, you know.
(9)
Emma Goldman, speech at the International
Working Men's Association in Paris (1937)
I
have seen from the moment of my first arrival in Spain in
September 1936 that our comrades in Spain are plunging head foremost
into the abyss of compromise that will lead them far away from their
revolutionary aim. Subsequent events have proved that those of us
who saw the danger ahead were right. The participation of the CNT-FAI
in the government, and concessions to the insatiable monster in Moscow,
have certainly not benefited the Spanish revolution, or even the anti-fascist
struggle. Yet closer contact with reality in Spain, with the almost
insurmountable odds against the
aspirations of the CNT-FAI, made me understand their tactics better,
and helped me to guard against any dogmatic judgment of our comrades.
The revolution in Spain
was the result of a military and fascist conspiracy. The first imperative
need that presented itself to the CNT-FAI was to drive out the conspiratorial
gang. The fascist danger had to be met with almost bare hands. In
this process the Spanish workers and peasants soon came to see that
their enemies were not only Franco and his Moorish hordes. They soon
found themselves besieged by formidable armies and an array of modern
arms furnished to Franco by Hitler and Mussolini, with all the imperialist
pack playing their sinister under-handed game. In other words, while
the Russian Revolution and the civil war were being fought out on
Russian soil and by Russians, the Spanish revolution and antifascist
war involves all the powers of Europe. It is no exaggeration to say
that the Spanish
Civil War has spread out far beyond its own confines.
With the most fervent desire
to aid the revolution in Spain, our comrades outside of it were neither
numerically nor materially strong enough to turn the tide. Thus finding
themselves up against a stone wall, the CNT-FAI was forced to descend
from its lofty traditional heights to compromise right and left: participation
in the government, all sorts of humiliating overtures to Stalin, superhuman
tolerance for his henchmen who were openly plotting and conniving
against the Spanish revolution.
Of all the unfortunate
concessions our people have made, their entry into ministries seemed
to me the least offensive. No, I have not changed my attitude toward
government as an evil. As all through my life, I still hold that the
State is a cold monster, and that it devours everyone within its reach.
Did I not know that the Spanish people see in government a mere makeshift,
to be kicked overboard at will, that they had never been deluded and
corrupted by the parliamentary myth, I should perhaps be more alarmed
for the future of the CNT-FAI. But with Franco at the gate of Madrid,
I could hardly blame the CNT-FAI for choosing a lesser evil - participation
in the government rather than dictatorship, the most deadly evil.
Russia has more than proven
the nature of this beast. After twenty years it still thrives on the
blood of its makers. Nor is its crushing weight felt in Russia alone.
Since Stalin began his invasion of Spain, the march of his henchmen
has been leaving death and ruin behind them. Destruction of numerous
collectives, the introduction of the Cheka with its 'gentle' methods
of treating political opponents, the arrest of thousands of revolutionaries,
and the murder in broad daylight of others. All this and more, has
Stalin's dictatorship given Spain, when he sold arms to the Spanish
people in return for good gold. Innocent of the Jesuitical trick of
'our beloved comrade' Stalin, the CNT-FAI could not imagine in their
wildest dreams the unscrupulous designs hidden behind the seeming
solidarity in the offer of arms from Russia.
Their need to meet Franco's
military equipment was a matter of life and death. The Spanish people
had not a moment to lose if they were not to be crushed. What wonder
if they saw in Stalin the saviour of the antifascist war? They have
since learned that Stalin helped to make Spain safe against the fascists
so as to make it safer for his own ends.
The critical comrades
are not at all wrong when they say that it does not seem worthwhile
to sacrifice one ideal in the struggle against fascism, if it only
means to make room for Soviet Communism. I am entirely of their view
- that there is no difference between them. My own consolation is
that with all their concentrated criminal efforts, Soviet Communism
has not taken root in Spain. I know whereof I speak. On my recent
visit to Spain I had ample opportunity to convince myself that the
Communists have failed utterly to win the sympathies of the masses;
quite the contrary. They have never been so hated by the workers and
peasants as now.
(10)
Jane Patrick, CNT-FAI radio broadcast (29th March, 1937)
What
do you think of the situation in Spain now? Do you think that the
revolution is progressing? For my part I see it slipping, slipping,
and that has been the position for some time. However, perhaps it
will be possible for it to be saved. Let us hope so, but it seems
to me that reaction is gaining a stronger hold each day. What do you
expect Britain and France to do about Italy, now that she has so openly
declared her intentions? Do you think they will rush an armistice
or
will they just let things slide? In my opinion they cannot afford
to let things slide as there is no limit to what the Duce will do,
and I don't think they will be prepared to declare war, so the only
alternative, so as as I can see, is an armistice. I think an armistice
would be a disgraceful thing, and the Anarchists of Spain would not
stand for it. But I am afraid the government cannot be trusted. The
government and its Communist Party allies are capable of anything.
What will follow? Of course, I do not know what will take place. It
is all speculation on my part but things seem to me to be in a very
bad way.
(11)
Conny Andersson was born in Örebro, in the middle of Southern
Sweden. He was politically active, much against the will of his foster
parents. In 1928 he joined the Social Democratic Youth Organization.
Conny Andersson studied at a Folk High-school when the Spanish Civil
War broke out. At New Year 1936/1937 he went to Spain. He participated
in the battles at Jarama
and Brunete.
His ear drums were ruined at Brunete which made the army dismiss him
before summer 1937.
When
Durruti, with his column of 3000 anarchists from Barcelona marched
to defend Madrid in November 1936, he tried to break these points
of view and show that you couldn't just sit at home, in your village,
city or part of the countryside waiting for the Fascist troops, to
fight only once they got there. You had to stand up against them at
the existing fronts. It's easy to like Anarchism. It's easy to feel
captivated by its passion for freedom. It's indisputable. The slogans
"against bureaucracy" and "against the Governmental
Apparatus"… It fascinates. But Spain was at war, and military
rulings are always a form of dictatorship. Someone has to give orders,
and the others have to obey. Those few times I was in Barcelona there
were a lot of young people there, just like in Aragon, in the district
of Murcia as well as in other places. When we were traveling to the
Cordoba-front I saw young boys out in the fields. They clasped their
hands over their heads - the beautiful Anarchist greeting. We thought
it was fancy - their way of greeting us, until one started reflecting
upon it: There they stand, clasping their hands, and here I am, on
my way to the front. But maybe they had to stay on the farms for the
sake of the food supply in the country. And even if all able bodies
had reported to the front, there weren't enough weapons to go around
anyway. As an interbrigadier I only once felt unwelcome. It was in
a village named Jacila, nearby Alcoy. There were a bunch of guys at
the bar, guys my own age, and they… they seemed to view me with
distrust. Now, this district had a strong Anarco-Syndicalism influence.
No, I didn't see much of the socializing on the government-side. But
one couldn't help noticing the Women's Liberation. They joined up
in all sorts of situations, in the hospitals and in the industries.
This was a sort of revolution in itself.
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