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). The CNT was a union that
was willing to accept peasants and unskilled workers who had no opportunity
to join unions in their own area.
The CNT was a union that
believed in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Members hoped
that this would eventually take place after the calling of a general
strike. 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.
After the overthrow of
Alfonso XIII
the CNT was legalized by the Second Republic. The CNT now reorganized
itself into a national labour union. Juan Peiró,
the secretary of the CNT argued that collaboration with the government
was more effective than terrorism in achieving social reforms. This
upset the FAI and they managed to get him ousted as editor of the
Solidaridad Obrero, the major
newspaper of the CNT.
The success of the right-wing
CEDA in the November 1933 elections helped
to reunite the warring factions in the CNT. In the next general elections
the CNT and FAI supported socialists and other radical candidates.
This action enabled the Popular Front
government to be established in February 1936.
On the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War the CNT was the largest
labour union in Spain. Its immediate response
to threat from the military uprising was to reunite with the Federación
Anarquista Ibérica. During the first few months of the
fighting the CNT held a dominant position in Málaga,
Valencia and Barcelona.
It also played a prominent role in Castellón, Gijón
and Cuenca.
The CNT-FAI
set up the Antifascist Militias Committee
in Barcelona on 24th July 1936. The
committee immediately sent Buenaventura
Durruti and 3,000 Anarchists
to Aragón in an attempt to take
the Nationalist held Saragossa.
Over 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-FAI claimed that he had been
murdered by members of the Communist
Party (PCE).
The Popular
Front government 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.
In the first year of the
Spanish Civil War the CNT tried to reorganize
the Spanish economy. National and regional conferences of peasants,
communication workers, metal workers and railway employees made efforts
to introduce collectivization.
In September 1936 José
Giral was replaced by Francisco
Largo Caballero as prime minister. Largo Caballero
brought into his government several left-wing radicals into his government
including four anarchists, Juan Garcia Oliver
(Justice), Juan López (Commerce),
Federica Montseny (Health) and Juan
Peiró (Industry).
After taking power Largo
Caballero concentrated on winning the war and did not pursue his policy
of social revolution. In an effort to gain the support of foreign
governments, he announced that his administration was "not fighting
for socialism but for democracy and constitutional rule."
In order to help the war
effort against the Nationalist
Army, on 26th November 1936, the CNT and the UGT
merged some of its activities. This had a moderating influence on
its policies. This upset the left-wing of the CNT who were concerned
by the growing influence of the Communist
Party (PCE) in the government. Their fears were reinforced by
the attacks on CNT members during the May
Riots.
The Juan
Negrin government gradually prohibited strikes, altered labour
agreements and broke up industrial collectives. When members of the
CNT attempted to resist these moves they were arrested.
(1)
Ilya Ehrenburg,
letter sent to Marcel
Rosenberg (17th September, 1936)
I spoke with Garcia Oliver.
He was also in a frenzied state. Intransigent. At the same time that
Lopez, the leader of the Madrid syndicalists, was declaring to me
that they had not permitted and would not permit attacks on the Soviet
Union
in the CNT newspaper, Oliver declared that they had said that they
were "criticizing" the Soviet Union because it was not an
ally, since it had signed the non-interference pact, and so on. Durruti,
who has been at the front, has learned a lot, whereas Oliver, in Barcelona,
is still nine-tenths anarchist ravings. For instance, he is against
a unified command on the Aragon front; a unified command is necessary
only when a general offensive begins. Sandino, who was present during
this part of the conversation, spoke out for a unified command. They
touched on the question of mobilization and the transformation of
the militia into an army. Durruti made much of the mobilization plans
(I do not know why - there are volunteers but no guns). Oliver said
that he agreed with Durruti, since "Communists and Socialists
are hiding themselves in the rear and pushing the FAI-ists out of
the cities and villages." At this point he was almost raving.
I would not have been surprised if he had shot me.
I spoke with Trueba, the
PSUC (Communist) political commissar. He complained about the FAI-ists.
They are not giving our men ammunition. We have only thirty-six bullets
left per man. The anarchists have reserves of a million and a half.
Colonel Villalba's soldiers only have a hundred cartridges each. He
cited many instances of the petty tyrannies of FAI. People from the
CNT complained to me that Fronsosa, the leader of PSUC, gave a speech
at a demonstration in San Boi in which he said that the Catalans should
not be given even one gun, since the guns would just fall into the
hands of the anarchists. In general, during the ten days that I was
in Catalonia, relations between Madrid and the generalitat on the
one hand, and that between the Communists and the anarchists on the
other, became very much more strained. Companys is wavering; either
he gravitates toward the anarchists, who have agreed to recognize
the national and even nationalistic demands of the Esquerra, or he
depends on the PSUC in the struggle against FAI. His circle is divided
between supporters of the former and of the latter solutions. If the
situation on the Talavera front worsens, we can expect him to come
out on one or the other side. We must improve relations between the
PSUC and the CNT and then try to get closer to Companys.
In Valencia our party
is working well, and the influence of the UGT is growing. But the
CNT has free rein there. The governor takes their side completely.
This is what happened when I was there: sixty anarchists with two
machine-guns turned up from the front, as their commander had been
killed. In Valencia they burned the archives and then wanted to break
into the prison to free the criminals. The censor (this is under Lopez,
the leader of the CNT) prohibited our newspaper from reporting about
any of this outrage, and in the CNT paper there was a note that the
"free masses destroyed the law archives as part of the accursed
past."
(2)
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.
(3)
Raymond
Sender, The War in Spain (1937)
The
rebels sowed desolation during the seven days in which the village
was in their hands. There was not a single peasant's house in which
some relation had not been murdered. The chiefs of the syndicate were
marched on foot to the cemetery, where they were forced to dig their
own graves. Whilst they were digging, the gentry of the Falange taunted
them: "Don't you say that the earth is for those who labour in
it? Now you see you are going to get your share. You can keep that
piece of land over you until the Day of Judgement." Others of
them said: "You needn't dig so deep; it is
already deep enough for a dog's grave.' Or they would advise them
to leave a little step where the head would lie, "so that they
would be more comfortable." The peasants went on digging in
silence. One of them tried to escape, but they caught him after wounding
him in the leg. They compelled the unfortunate man to open a grave,
telling him that it was for someone else, and when that was done they
made him lie down at full length in it, "to see if
it would hold a human body." When he had done so, they fired
on him and without seeing if he had been killed, ordered the grave-digger
to fill in the grave. He said to them: "He seems to be moving
still." The Falangists pointed their revolvers at him and warned
him to take care, because "many a man is hung by his tongue."
(4)
Edward
Knoblaugh,
Correspondent in Spain (1937)
Largo Caballero began to realize the need for
immediate drastic action. As president of the U.G.T., he summoned
the sub-leaders of this Revolutionary Socialist group and impressed
upon them the desperateness of the situation. The result was a round-table
conference among the U.G.T., the heads of the Syndicalists National
Confederation of Labor (C.N.T.), The Federation of Iberian Anarchists
(F.A.I.), The Trotsky Communists (Partido Obrero Unificado Marxists
- P.O.U.M.), The Stalin Communists and the Left Republicans. In the
first agreement which these divergent factions had been able to reach
since the beginning of the war they approved the immediate mobilization
of all able-bodied men in Loyalist territory. A decree to this effect
was issued. Whether they wanted to join or not, all men between the
ages of 20 and 45 were pressed into military service. From this moment
on, the Loyalist army ceased to be a voluntary army.
(5)
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.
(6)
Manchester Guardian (31st August
1936)
Life
in Malaga goes on calmly enough on the surface. There are, of course,
the burned houses and the flags, and one sees fewer well-dressed people
than in ordinary times.
Only foreigners
wear a tie, for ties are now the sign that one is a "senorito."
The letters U.G.T., C.N.T., U.H.P., F.A.I., and a good many more denoting
the various parties are painted on walls, on cars and lorries, on
trees, on any surface that will take them. One cannot buy a melon
in the market-place that has not got some initials scratched on it.
There are also a good many militia about, dressed in their new uniforms
of blue cotton overalls with red armlets.
The Committee
system which come into existence in Spain when popular feeling, impatient
of corrupt and incompetent bureaucratic methods, demands some outlet
in action. But there is one committee new to Spain - the Committee
of Public Health and Safety, - which came into existence on the day
on which the Governor left the city, the 12th of this month. It is
the Spanish equivalent of the Russian Cheka.
Here is
a brief description of the workings of the committees in general.
At the head is the Comité de Enlace, or Union, which decides
the general policy. It is composed of twenty members, one of whom
is the Governor, who seems otherwise to have only nominal powers,
and it supervises all the other committees, those of Supply, of Labour,
or Transport, of War, of Public Health and Safety, and so on. All
the various parties of the Left, from Republicans to Anarchists, sit
on these committees, and my impression of their work is that they
are remarkably efficient. The ordinary machinery of Spanish local
government could never have done half as much.
The Committee
of Public Health and Safety investigates charges of hostility to the
regime, provides safe conducts, organises search parties for wanted
people, and shoots them. In five days it shot well over a hundred
people in Malaga alone. To begin with it shot some thirty prisoners
who were kept on a ship in the harbour. Some of these were senior
police officers who refused to join the Government; others were prominent
people of the Right; one was a marquesa caught using a private transmitting
set. They were taken to a cemetery and shot. Then came the people
who were dragged out of their houses at night, put in cars, driven
off to some quiet road, and killed there. Their only crime as a rule
was affiliation to the Ceda, the Right Catholic party, or their having
offended some workman or other. Some of these people have been killed
with shocking violence. One I saw had his head bashed in; another
who had not died at the first volley had had his throat cut; others
had their fingers, ears, or noses sliced off, after death, of course;
they are cut off to be taken away as trophies.
The
men who do this belong to the F.A.I., the anarchist organisation which
is so extended in Barcelona and Saragossa and also provides the shock
troops and gunmen for the Fascist party, Falange Espanola. They buy
them by giving them work at good wages, with extra payment for assassinations,
and as the membership of the Falange is secret they often remain at
the same time both Fascists and anarchists.
But there
has been a great change in the last few days. The anarchist bands
who were dragging harmless people out of their houses after midnight
and shooting them have been put down. Some have been shot, and militia
patrol the streets and have orders to fire on any cars with armed
men in them whom they see about after midnight. No one can be arrested
and no house searched without a warrant signed by the Governor. The
Committee of Public Safety have advisory powers only.
Another
change is that red flags have been forbidden, and, except in some
of the poorer quarters, the only colours now to be seen are the Republican.
The explanation of this is that there has been a tightening up of
the "Popular Front" in Madrid. The Governor of Malaga, who
had just returned from a conference there, told me that an agreement
had been arrived at between the Republican parties and the Socialist
and Communist parties, with all their affiliated bodies, by which
any form of Communism or dictatorship of the proletariat was entirely
ruled out.
It seems
hardly worth while, in the shambles that Spain is becoming, to deny
any stories of atrocities. Yet I would like to say that reports published
in the English papers of nuns led about naked in the streets of Malaga
are the purest invention; on the contrary, they were taken either
to the Town Hall for safety or to their own houses and were treated
with perfect respect throughout. Sisters of Charity still go about
the streets in their uniforms. Those killed are killed brutally but
quickly; the truth by itself, without ornaments, is bad enough.
Yesterday some bombs were dropped in Malaga. A tank of oil and a smaller
supply of petrol were set on fire, making a prodigious blaze, but
other bombs that fell on a popular quarter killed about forty people
and wounded a hundred and fifty, mostly women and children. If Germans
had been living all over London during the last war and if the whole
of the police and almost every soldier had been at the front I think
there might have been some lynchings after air raids.
And, in fact, a mob marched that evening to the prison, took out forty-five
prisoners, and shot them. Those who point to atrocities of this sort
on the Government side often forget the provocation and the circumstances.
When soldiers and police have to go to the front because other soldiers
and police have rebelled, who is left to keep order among an enraged
population?
(7)
Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko,General
Consul of the Soviet Union in Barcelona
, top secret document sent to NKVD
(14th October,
1936)
The relationship between
our people (the Communists) and the anarcho-syndicalists is becoming
ever more strained. Every day, delegates and individual comrades appear
before the CC of the Unified Socialist Party with statements about
the excesses of the anarchists. In places it has come to armed clashes.
Not long ago in a settlement of Huesca near Barbastro twenty-five
members of the UGT were killed by the anarchists in a surprise attack
provoked by unknown reasons. In Molins de Rei, workers in a textile
factory stopped work, protesting against arbitrary dismissals. Their
delegation to Barcelona was driven out of the train, but all the same
fifty workers forced their way to Barcelona with complaints for the
central government, but now they are afraid to return, anticipating
the anarchists' revenge. In Pueblo Nuevo near Barcelona, the anarchists
have placed an armed man at the doors of each of the food stores,
and if you do not have a food coupon from the CNT, then you cannot
buy anything. The entire population of this small town is highly excited.
They are shooting up to fifty people a day in Barcelona. (Miravitlles
told me that they were not shooting more than four a day).
Relations with the Union
of Transport Workers are strained. At the beginning of 1934 there
was a protracted strike by the transport workers. The government and
the "Esquerra" smashed the strike. In July of this year,
on the pretext of revenge against the scabs, the CNT killed more than
eighty men, UGT members, but not one Communist among them. They killed
not only actual scabs but also honest revolutionaries. At the head
of the union is Comvin, who has been to the USSR, but on his return
he came out against us. Both he and, especially, the other leader
of the union - Cargo - appear to be provocateurs. The CNT, because
of competition with the hugely growing UGT, are recruiting members
without any verification. They have taken especially many lumpen from
the port area of Barrio Chino.
They have offered our people
two posts in the new government - Council of Labour and the Council
of Municipal Work - but it is impossible for the Council of Labour
to institute control over the factories and mills without clashing
sharply with the CNT, and as for municipal services, one must clash
with the Union of Transport Workers, which is in the hands of the
CNT. Fabregas, the councillor for the economy, is a "highly doubtful
sort." Before he joined the Esquerra, he was in the Accion Popular;
he left the Esquerra for the CNT and now is playing an obviously provocative
role, attempting to "deepen the revolution" by any means.
The metallurgical syndicate just began to put forward the slogan "family
wages." The first "producer in the family" received
100 percent wages, for example seventy pesetas a week, the sec- ond
member of the family 50 percent, the third 25 percent, the fourth,
and so on, up to 10 percent. Children less than sixteen years old
only 10 percent each, This system of wages is even worse than egalitarianism.
It kills both production and the family.
In Madrid there are up
to fifty thousand construction workers. Caballero refused to mobilize
all of them for building fortifications around Madrid ("and what
will they eat") and gave a total of a thousand men for building
the fortifications. In Estremadura our Comrade Deputy Cordon is fighting
heroically. He could arm five thousand peasants but he has a detachment
of only four thousand men total. Caballero under great pressure agreed
to give Cordon two hundred rifles, as well. Meanwhile, from Estremadura,
Franco could easily advance into the rear, toward Madrid. Caballero
implemented an absolutely absurd compensation for the militia - ten
pesetas a day, besides food and housing. Farm labourers in Spain earn
a total of two pesetas a day and, feeling very good about the militia
salary in the rear, do not want to go to the front. With that, egalitarianism
was introduced. Only officer specialists receive a higher salary.
A proposal made to Caballero to pay soldiers at the rear five pesetas
and only soldiers at the front ten pesetas was turned down. Caballero
is now disposed to put into effect the institution of political commissars,
but in actual fact it is not being done. In fact, the political commissars
introduced into the Fifth Regiment have been turned into commanders,
for there are none of the latter. Caballero also supports the departure
of the government from Madrid. After the capture of Toledo, this question
was almost decided, but the anarchists were categorically against
it, and our people proposed that the question be withdrawn as inopportune.
Caballero stood up for the removal of the government to Cartagena.
They proposed sounding out the possibility of basing the government
in Barcelona. Two ministers - Prieto and Jimenez de Asua - left for
talks with the Barcelona government. The Barcelona government agreed
to give refuge to the central government. Caballero is sincere but
is a prisoner to syndicalist habits and takes the statutes of the
trade unions too literally.
The UGT is now the strongest
organization in Catalonia: it has no fewer than half the metallurgical
workers and almost all the textile workers, municipal workers, service
employees, bank employees. There are abundant links to the peasantry.
But the CNT has much better cadres and has many weapons, which were
seized in the first days (the anarchists sent to the front fewer than
60 percent of the thirty thousand rifles and three hundred machine
guns that they seized).
(8)
Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko,
General Consul of the Soviet
Union in Barcelona
, top secret document sent to NKVD
(18th October,
1936)
My conversations with
Garcia Oliver and with several other CNT members, and their latest
speeches, attest to the fact that the leaders of the CNT have an honest
and serious wish to concentrate all forces in a strengthened united
front and on the development of military action against the fascists.
I must note that the PSUC is not free from certain instances that
hamper the "consolidation of a united front": in particular,
although the Liaison Commission has just been set up, the party organ
Treball suddenly published an invitation to the CNT and the
FAI that, since the experience with the Liaison Commission had gone
so well, the UGT and the PSUC had suggested that the CNT and the FAI
create even more unity in the form of an action commission. This kind
of suggestion was taken by leaders of the FAI as simply a tactical
maneuver. Comrade Valdes and Comrade Sese did not hide from me that
the just-mentioned suggestion was meant to "talk to the masses
of the CNT over the heads of their leaders." The same sort of
note was sounded at the appearance of Comrade Comorera at the PSUC
and UGT demonstration on 18 October - on the one hand, a call for
protecting and developing the united front and, on the other, boasting
about the UGT's having a majority among the working class in Catalonia,
accusing the CNT and the FAI of carrying out a forced collectivization
of the peasants, of hiding weapons, and even of murdering "our
comrades."
The PSUC leaders-designate
agreed with me that such tactics were completely wrong and expressed
their intention to change them. I propose that we get together in
the near future with a limited number of representatives of the CNT
and the FAI to work out a concrete program for our next action.
In the near future, the PSUC intends to bring forward the question
on reorganizing the management of military industry. At this point
the Committee on Military Industry works under the chairmanship of
Tarradellas, but the
main role in the committee is played by Vallejos (from the FAI). The
PSUC proposes to put together leadership from representatives from
all of the organizations, to group the factories by specialty, and
to place at the head of each group a commissar, who would answer to
the government.
The evaluation by Garcia
Oliver and other CNT members of the Madrid government seems well founded
to me. Caballero's attitude toward the question of attracting the
CNT into that or any other form of government betrays his obstinate
incomprehension of that question's importance. Without the participation
of the CNT, it will not, of course, be possible to create the appropriate
enthusiasm and discipline in the people's militia/Republican militia.
The information concerning
the intentions of the Madrid government for a timely evacuation from
Madrid was confirmed. This widely disseminated information undermines
confidence in the central government to an extraordinary degree and
paralyzes the defense of Madrid.
(9)
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.
(10)
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.
(11)
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.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
