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“The Russian revolution, which is the first historical experiment on the model of the mass strike, not merely does not afford a vindication of Anarchism but actually means the historical liquidation of Anarchism”. [1905]13

“The Spanish peasant is even more of an individualist than the French peasant: he is haughtier, prouder”. [1927]14

Subsequent historical events made nonsense of both of the above quotes, the first of which emanates from a Marxist and the second from a bourgeois advocate of cooperatives. They are enlightening as to the shortcomings of supposedly scientific or universal analyses that amount to nothing more than “cover” for subjective personal opinion (not to mention outright lies, as witness those ‘scientific’ studies justifying genetic modification or denying global warming, etc.).

Rather than delving into the facts and figures of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, it might be wiser to explain how and why it came to be so strong.

From without and from within: the reasons behind the endurance of anarchist trade unionism (or, from the 1930s onwards, anarcho-syndicalism) in Spain, seen through the eyes of outsiders and insiders.

One logical question that arises is: why was anarchism so strong in Spain from the late-nineteenth century through to 1936, when it had vanished elsewhere? The question becomes a lot clearer when we note that in the United States during the same period the workers’ movement was anarchist as well—as witness the Haymarket Martyrs—and it would effectively remain such in the form of the IWW, which subscribed to no particular ideology and no political party, but championed direct action and working-class solidarity (“an injury to one is an injury to all”).

In Spain, there was a labor, socially minded anarchism just as there was in the USA. This was not the anarchism of some Bohemian intellectuals or navel-gazing individualists. By the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, initially in France, and then in Russia with the soviets of 1905, labor used direct-action tactics and had a mistrust of the parties of the left. Such was the effect of this repudiation that, in April 1917, Lenin had to oppose his own party’s central committee and push through the anarchist watchphrase of “All power to the soviets” in order to win power by means of manipulation (through trade union officials—paid officials—and self-styled workers’ leaders like Trotsky) and through the creation in 1917 of the Cheka in order to end the notion of a horizontal revolution benefiting the workers themselves and establish instead a nomenklatura (a privileged class within or dependent upon the Party) along with the NEP,15 and ­privileges for a new, Red class.

Anarcho-syndicalism and the Spartakists were on the rise in Germany between 1918 and the end of the 1920s, when they were swept aside by armed socialists and right-wingers, not to mention Nazi and capitalist pressures.

And if this labor-based, socially minded anarchism petered out, or almost, within the proletarian movement in many countries such as the USA, France and the USSR, this was due to murder, heavy sentencing and huge fines, to the judges and the bosses, to corruption and gangsterish pressures brought to bear by reformist trade unions and the gulags of “actually existing” socialism.

In Spain, anarcho-syndicalism’s sway can be explained first in terms of the make-up of the CNT, the political and social extraction of its membership and the determination and organisation without which nothing durable can be achieved. Whilst the goal of the CNT was libertarian communism as defined by Bakunin, Kropotkin and the like, the union was open to all workers, regardless of political or religious differences. It was notable that Spanish workers made their choice by espousing libertarian tactics against the oligarchy. In Spain, anarcho-syndicalism’s sway over artists, writers and the petite bourgeoisie was less than was the case in France. Terrorism was also less of a factor in Spain than in France, Italy or Russia. Individualists and attempts to launch communes were less also, contrary to the experiences in France and Russia.

In order to gloss over the repression of anarchism in many countries, historians ask why anarchist influence was so strong in Spain (for the Marxists, see Appendix XV below, page 286).

On the subject of anarchism, Gerald Brenan, a fine English Hispanist, borrowed heavily from Díaz del Moral (whose ideas are set out here) and argued that anarchism reflected millenarianism, with a yearning for the egalitarianism of the Middle Ages. Hugh Thomas, James Joll, Eric Hobsbawm (who serves it up in a Marxist sauce) and Nazario González however have knowingly rehearsed the Díaz del Moral line without acknowledgment.

Not that the anarchists’ own views of the reasons for their success should be immune from criticism. Alongside the rather accurate overall analysis from Renée Lamberet who highlighted the natural geographical barriers suited to federalist ideas, the oppressiveness of iniquitous exploitation in an industrial and agricultural setting or the gravitas of Spanish workers, we find far-fetched explanations invoking the “temperamental anarchism of Spaniards”,16 not to mention newspaper articles talking about the death-defying CNT, the phoenix risen from the ashes, etc.

With a degree of success, Brenan strove to delineate and separate the anarchists and the socialists geographically. And it looks as if some scholars have also been drawn to class divisions: “In Valencia and Castellón, well-to-do peasants belonged to the Catholic right or to the republican camp, just as those from fertile Granada belonged to the socialists”.17 But reality does not fit into such deterministic patterns: in Madrid, printing workers belonged to the UGT; in Barcelona, they belonged to the CNT. The Asturian miners were socialists, with a sizable CNT minority, whereas their counterparts in Aragon and Catalonia belonged to the CNT. Dockers in Barcelona and Gijón were in the CNT, but in Seville, were communists.18 This list might be extended to take in poorer peasants who were with the CNT in Aragon, with the home rule republicans in Catalonia, with the UGT in Castile and split between the CNT and the UGT in Levante.

In our own view, there are two explanatory factors at work here. Direct action trade unionism was a tactic that met the workers’ requirements. And that brand of trade unionism came first in Spain and left little opening for other movements to develop.

We need look no further than to a few of its opponents for an assessment of the pros and cons of the Bakuninist-style trade unionism that put down roots in the Iberian peninsula from 1868 onwards. Three witnesses, unconnected with trade unionism (one a republican free-mason, one a ­soviet Marxist and one a co-founder of the POUM—see note 20 below) have useful comments to make (given their particular outlook and the way they confound anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism) regarding the foothold gained by Spanish anarcho-syndicalism between the late-nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century.

Anarchism has, very wrongly, been taken to task for its tremendous tactical errors. But apart from the terrorism and individual acts that represent the blot upon its escutcheon what else would have worked in Andalusia? What other school of social thought could, in such a short time, have mobilised the broad masses of wage-earners, that imaginative but uneducated breed, whose apathy yields to nothing except fits of enthusiasm? The socialists’ dusty, cold message, a thousand leagues removed from the hearts of the workers, would have needed a century to rouse the slumberers. Republicanism quickly ran out of myths. Only a doctrine of the religious and utopian cast, with its many fervent apostles, its ardent, prolific preaching, its impulsive sectarianism, its dizzying enthusiasm, its naïve, primitive, simplistic teachings (which brought it all the closer to the sensibilities and understanding of the Andalusian masses and suited it to their psychic make-up and underlying yearnings) had virtue enough to bring off the miracle […] Anarchism sees the social question as a matter of knowledge: in times of conflict and in average circles at any rate, the belief—shared by Socrates—is that one cannot be aware of what is good and then fail to practise it and that error is the source of evil: only out of ignorance of anarchist teaching could someone espouse a position indifferent or hostile towards it. Hence the drive to spread the word and the implicit confidence in the effectiveness of the spoken word. Neither the socialists nor the republicans nor any other party aspiring to win the people’s hearts can stand comparison with the anarchists in this regard. At the turn of the century virtually all of the most highly regarded inspirational works of this school of thought were published in Spanish: a tide of translated pamphlets or originals from the pens of native-born militants pushed the libertarian message everywhere; the anarchist press reached into the furthest-flung corners of Spain; armies of agitators, spurred on by a burning sectarianism, toured the cities, towns and villages preaching the good news […] Besides, their teaching and propaganda were normally shot through with moralistic themes. Respect for womanhood and equality of the sexes in the home and in society, love of nature and of learning, the drive against alcohol abuse, tobacco and gambling are recurrent themes in their newspaper articles and rally speeches. Finally, the Iberian anarchist greedily gobbled up and harnessed to his creed all social trends marked with the cachet of novelty. [Apropos of a strike by Andalusian farm laborers in 1919] the masses were gripped by an ardent craving for knowledge as in 1903. Reading was unrelenting by night in their farmsteads; by day in the ploughed fields, during (smoking) breaks the spectacle was always the same: some worker reading and the rest listening very attentively. A newspaper was the most-welcomed gift that could be bestowed upon a working man who found himself at a loose end. Farm labourers carried some pamphlet or newspaper in their knapsacks along with their lunches. Any one of the trade unionist villages received hundreds of copies of the like-minded press, ­purchased even by those who could not read.19

Another significant factor in the reinforcement and growth of the anarchist influence in Spain was its very own organisational approach: anarchist agitation was essentially flexible and akin to traditional native forms of organisation and struggle tailored to the needs of revolutionary consciousness and indeed of the less mature masses […] Thus, in Spain, anarchism was not confined to the peddling of social utopianism and terrorist acts. It invited mass activity and scored a number of practical successes. After half a century of growth, that very tradition on the part of the anarchist movement became a serious material factor in the further strengthening of its influence.20

In the forty-one years between the anarchist-socialist split at the congress in The Hague and the Russian revolution, the anarchist movement was fighting a rearguard action in the face of the socialist advance on all fronts (except for Spain and Portugal where anarchists in the nineteenth century, and anarcho-syndicalists in the early twentieth, still outnumbered and outmatched the socialist movement). There are several reasons why the process in Spain was rather different from that elsewhere:

One—Spanish anarchists got the measure of the peasant question long before the socialists, and, right from the outset, anarchism took root in Andalusia, the heartland of the Spanish agrarian question.

Two—Anarchists established their main base in Barcelona, which was the industrial heart of the country, whereas the socialists were centered in Madrid.

Three—The anarchists were formidable and indefatigable propagandists. They published newspapers, reviews and pamphlets galore. At the turn of the century, the Tierra y Libertad (published in Madrid) went from weekly publication to daily and, without question, became the world’s very first anarchist daily newspaper. The Sempere-Prometeo publishing house, based in Valencia and run by Blasco Ibáñez, was offering the full gamut of the anarchist literature of the day at prices to suit every pocket. Socialists never placed any great stock in printed propaganda; they made do with publishing three or four weeklies around the country.

Four—Even though the number of intellectuals belonging to their organisations was very tiny, anarchists pursued an intelligent policy of wooing them, by inviting them to contribute to their reviews and newspapers. The so-called ‘generation of ’98’, which ushered in a whole new era in Spain’s intellectual life at the turn of the century, was intuitively anarchist. By contrast, up until the latter half of the twentieth century, socialists were suspicious of intellectuals, and shunned them.

Five—The anarchists were more ‘up for a fight’ than the socialists. Though, more often than not, crude and wrong-headed, the peasant uprisings in Andalusia ignited the flames of a yearning for liberation, the embers of which never quite died out even in the wake of failure. Humble peasants would gather around those smouldering embers to listen to readings from Malatesta’s ­pamphlets or Kropotkin’s The ­Conquest of Bread.

Six—Anarchists caught on to the importance of educating the young as a means of shaping the fighters of the future. They set up rationalist schools, the chief proponent of which—Francisco Ferrer—added a martyr of international repute to the anarchist pantheon when he was executed by firing squad in 1909.

Seven—Anarchists resorted to terrorism as a political weapon. Though in some instances this backfired, in other instances the outcome was positive, and at all times it was terrifying.

Eight—Relentlessly harassed, the anarchists acquired a practical grounding in subterranean activity, whereas the socialists were preoccupied with not infringing on the established law.

Nine—The Madrid-Barcelona or Castile-Catalonia divide proved of assistance to the anarchists whose opposition to Madrid was in line with the opposition coming from the Catalan middle class.

Ten—Being rather mystical, quixotic, adventurous and individualistic, anarchism was a closer fit to the psychological profile of the Spanish people than a socialism that was cold, schematic and all formality, discipline and regulation.

Eleven—The First World War triggered rapid industrial expansion in Catalonia with a resultant expansion of the workers’ movement, which was marshalled and led by anarcho-syndicalists.

Twelve—Anarcho-syndicalists were quicker off the mark than the socialists when it came to appreciating the advantages of turning craft unions into industrial ones. The emergence of the Sindicato Único (one, all-embracing union) was a revolutionary event and proved such a boost to anarcho-syndicalism that the bulk of the Spanish working class was drawn into the orbit of the National Confederation of Labor (CNT).

Thirteen—Last, but not least, anarchists demo­nstrated an imagination lacking in the socialists.21

The effectiveness, adaptability and inventiveness of the CNT over time and space are apparent from the following quotes, quite apart from the remarks about the religiosity or utopianism applicable to just about any “-ism”, starting with capitalism. The CNT outlook itself explains the impact.

The ideological essence of syndicalism

In labor organisations whose members are not entirely driven by their bellies, there is, as in everything in life, a material part and a separate essential, spiritual or ideological part, call it what you will. If only the material part grows, to wit, the pursuit of more money and reduced hours, it will never be anything more than a sort of an aperitif or stomach-liner and an imitation of the miller’s donkey or the ‘carousel’ pony. Meaning that after several centuries of dogged struggle, they will remain what they were the day they started out: a mass of exploited wage-slaves barely able to cover their most basic needs. And this must necessarily be the case: the worker is producer and consumer, and unless a radical attack is mounted upon the unjust right of private property, which allows some to lay hands upon what others produce, rendering economic equality—the foundation of harmony and human brotherhood and the fountain of all true freedom and justice—impossible, all the money he earns as a producer will promptly be wrested from him as a consumer. The more expensive the labor, the pricier the product. The upshot being that, when their time has run out, they will have frittered their time away on skirmishes and intestinal strife, only to finish up marooned in the vicious circle of the exploited wage-slave […]

One cannot preach brotherhood and then be a splitter of hairs, a bearer of grudges, a moaner, a gangster, a slanderer or begrudger. One cannot claim to be enamoured of freedom and a fighter for emancipation and then dig in one’s heels and be overbearing in company, at meetings and in one’s social relations, and at home with one’s partner and children… a tyrant and inquisitor, not to say a wretched exploiter.22

Direct-action syndicalism and Salvador Seguí (painter and decorator, Barcelona):

[El Heraldo newspaper] But do other trade union leaders say the same? Or at any rate can they guarantee as much with the same determination with which you have answered me?

[Salvador Seguí] Yes, of course. They guarantee it too. At least they point out that becoming a deputy means giving up the leadership of the union. I cannot answer for them because they are old enough to answer for themselves.

Not that we hate Parliament: it is simply that we have woken up to the fact that the parliamentary system is utterly useless. It needs to be jettisoned as something there is no point in our bothering with. Take it from me! We have resolved this matter and turned our backs on the matter.

Yes, but the tactics you adopt in your organisation have no need of parliament’s assistance. [Seguí looks at me rather ironically, suggesting that the question should be put to him bluntly. This was no time to accede to the invitation. I carried on regardless.]

What are your tactics?

Very simple, actually. The organisations predating those presently in existence were not practical, or they were not entirely practical. The gains made on the worker’s behalf were so slow in coming and so insignificant as to make the creation of new organisations imperative. We school the worker to a climate of confidence in his own determination and his own endeavours. That everybody is sufficient unto himself when it comes to carrying out his mission as a human being. We simply teach them to struggle against all who may be their enemies. People believe that we are only out for an extra peseta a day and, perhaps, an hour off the working day. They are mistaken. We seek our emancipation as workers and thereby the destruction of the law of wages. Let everybody work, everybody, all of us equals! We enter the fray with the Unions, yes, and that is the reason why we have organised them appropriately.

The organising is admirable. We all know that by now. But the tactics, what are the tactics?

Well, each is the outworking of the other. Don’t go thinking that we prefer quantity over quality. At the outset what we were after was ten competent workers, worthwhile and alive to their duties and their rights, rather than ten thousand workers who might not be able to stand up to the harassment, the abuse, the hunger, imprisonment and the entire litany of dirty tricks deployed in efforts to intimidate us. For we knew that the example set by those ten would be enough to educate the masses in the pursuit of social improvement. So that it would be impossible to stand against us. Should that ten be rounded up, another ten will pop up and so on and so on until we number ten thousand. Terrifying and monstrous though it may be, high-handedness can never cope with such numbers. By looking out for quality alone we have achieved the numbers that have rocked governments and the bosses on their heels during the recent campaign in Catalonia. Many of the workers who came out on strike may well not have had a full grasp of the essential meaning of syndicalism. But hatred for the boss who exploits and niggles them, and the daily dose of high-handed treatment, as well as the example set by other workers—in terms of self-denial and disinterestedness—were enough. They knew just what needed doing should the strike carry on, and that did the trick.

Yes, Pestaña said the same thing only yesterday.

Well that’s all there is to it. We teach them how to look out for themselves. Do you think it takes long to get the hang of it? And once learned, do you think there is any need to take the worker from here and plant him down somewhere else and tell him: Now, rebel at five o’clock tomorrow morning, back down at seven and rebel again at nine and back down at twelve, only to rebel again at nine and back off yet again at twelve? No. That would be an impossibility. The social question boils down to this: learning how to do for oneself. We do not have anything great to give the worker, nor do we promise him a rose garden. Rose gardens are within his reach, just as they are within the reach of bourgeois avarice. Within and without, we are all equal, or maybe you doubt that on the grounds that the ransacking of a Bank today brings the proletariat no benefit. And that it is still subject to the boss’s ­exploitation the day after […]

The oppression of the majority, the strait-jacket of authority, the persistence of bullying, the gobbling-up of worthwhile things created by other people… As long as this endures, we have no option but to plump for union­isation that will assume various forms: violent forms, every time, if violence is imposed upon them. With agencies for resistance up and running, these may well, by themselves, be equal to the attack. This is the education we offer the working man: we see to it that he acquires the habits of cohesiveness and discipline, so that, when the time comes, all syndicalists act as one man. And it seems to me that in Catalonia we have pulled it off.23

The malaise among the masses, generated by their wretched, enslaved conditions, prompts them blindly to embrace ideas offered to them like drink to a thirsty man, like a balm, like an antidote to the world as it is. But do the masses look any further than that? Are they aware of how they might set themselves free? We say no. At best, they know that they should set themselves free, but this is not enough. What is needed is a clearer picture, a sharper picture of the order to be established and, if any attempt is to be made to carry out an overhaul as far reaching as the one we would like to come to life, at the very least the chief principles upon which justice rests need to be planted in the minds of the masses in order to conjure up a new consciousness. That is the sort of education we reckon should come before any decisive action.

If we pause for a moment to reflect upon what our revolution ought to be, we will see that it cannot follow any other course. We do not want the people mounting all this effort just to effect a change in overseer, but rather to shrug off all oversight. Which is why we mean to strengthen the individual by educating him. The herd instinct must be banished from humanity. Unless we turn our thoughts to that, we should not describe ourselves as libertarians because the freedom we crave cannot exist wherever there are those determined—if it can be called determination—to offer unthinking obedience to the orders of a minority.

We cannot say how long it will take to educate the people. In our view this depends on how much effort we put into it. However, we can say that, without such education, there can be no talk of genuine emancipation for them, and that arguments to the contrary are self-delusion or the deception of others!24

Anarchists inside the trade unions. Work to be done.

What is it that those anarchists, who do not believe that organisation should be along state lines, want? They will say that they practice Anarchism so as to arrive at near perfection. Might it not be the case that the comrades back in ’68 and ’73, in their congresses and despite their sectarian practices, foresaw and understood that the economic side to Anarchism might be implemented immediately? I reckon the answer is yes.

Certain facets of the issues raised by Anarchism can be put into effect. Who but the workers were in a position to understand this new thinking? Who but the workers can carry out the overhaul?

But I doubt there is anybody who thinks he is watching the defeat of the bourgeois capitalist world’s economic values; that he is witnessing the collapse of phony old ideas that are likewise bourgeois and being replaced by values and ideas such as the issues that Anarchism poses in the round. Let us say, for we owe it to the truth, that we are moving towards the posing of some of the problems raised by anarchism.

Anarchists have a mission to perform within the unions, watching over their survival and orientation. By not neglecting trade union activity, their influence will grow; the organisation will be that much more libertarian and will trigger the advent of a new society that much sooner. Anarchists should act out their anarchist ideals within the trade unions. It is suicide for anarchists to hold aloof from trades organisations. Everything should and can be done within the Unions.

Which is not to say that they should dissolve the groups already in existence. No, not at all. On the contrary, these can amalgamate with the Unions. The greater the influence they wield, the more Anarchism and the more anarchists. These days, Anarchism is not the bogeyman it once was, and this is because of the persuasive work carried out. It was thanks to anarchist influence that, at the regional congress in Catalonia and at the national congress in 1918 and 1919, respectively, the trade union organisation embraced the emphatic statement that our sights are set on achieving libertarian communism, something that might well have been rejected in 1914 since anarchists kept their distance from the ­organisations then.

The Russian state. The role of the unions.

Production should be organised and regulated, not by the anarchist groups nor by state organizations, but by the unions.

We are not Leninists, in that we do not believe that the State, no matter how revolutionary and socialist it may purport to be, should have the usufruct of the means of production.

[We believe] that the only ones equipped for that are the Unions, because, for one thing, they are more moral. And for another, because they are more competent.

It is not the calling of the Russian State, no matter how essentially socialist it may be, to distribute production. That would be like getting folk to believe in some supernatural agent. In Germany we have already seen a number of failures under a socialist State. And even though the situation there is not the same as in Russia, the State has proven itself markedly incompetent.25

Ángel Pestaña (watch-maker) was equally blunt:

Of all the issues raised in the Unions, this one, relating to officials or persons paid for handling administrative and secretarial business, may well be the one that provokes the gravest and most serious difficulties […] Experiences elsewhere should caution us against using our hard-saved pennies on the upkeep of the harmful beast that would devour us: the bureaucrat.

How are we to get around this snag and break out of the vicious cycle in which necessity has us trapped? By switching away from the approach used in other countries. Elsewhere, the permanent official is still the general secretary of the Union who is in charge of the organisation and of leading it, until he turns into a bit of a lordling imposed on the Union.

The approach we should take, since we cannot get by without standing officials, is to ensure that the latter are mere employees, in the strictest sense of the term. They would have no vote and no voice at committee meetings and would attend those in order to take the minutes, offering an opinion only if asked. A functionary… a ­functionary and nothing more.

The general secretary, like the treasurer and like all the members of the committee, must work for a living and report to the workshop every day, lest they lose touch with the workers. They must also show that they are not living off the union dues. If anyone is to be paid out of those dues, it should not be the committee proper, and some comrade employed out of the union’s necessity, but one who has no say in the union’s decision-making.

This should apply also to the Local Federation and Regional Confederation.

This policy is harder to apply to the National Confederation. But on the other hand, the general secretaryship should be renewed at each congress, with the incumbent prohibited from being re-elected for more than two consecutive terms—although alternate terms may be acceptable. The danger here is much reduced, and anything representing a help in averting or reducing it—should it not prove possible to banish it ­altogether—should be welcomed.26

The Sindicato único

This is one of the most interesting issues raised by the congress, which recognized the enormous implications, and two whole sittings were set aside for its discussion and approval. The unanimity by which the resolution was carried is clear proof of the proletariat’s yearning for change, in respect to organisational matters related to workers’ associations. It was an oddity that groups of workers, drawn not from a similar sector or industry, but from a given trade or profession, should have launched two, three or more unions for that trade or profession within the same locality. The drawbacks to such organisational arrangements were exposed time and time again when those bodies were defeated by the bourgeoisie, and on other occasions when, without quite failing, the success of our struggle was compromised for the want of unity among workers. It was because of this that the congress saw fit to render more compact and close-knit through its resolution on the sindicato único, which ­embraces an entire sector or industry.

There is no question that this amendment to organisational methods is very important, but it would be childish to argue that we can implement it fully in a very short period of time as some have suggested. Within some sectors and industries implementation is not going to be feasible until such time as genuine enthusiasm is consistently invested in efforts to achieve the desired end. So there is no question of eliminating the time factor from a matter of such overwhelming significance […]

Furthermore, we hold that this mode of organisation is futuristic in that its very simplicity will, if necessary, make it feasible to compile complete figures for overall production, as well as to proceed with the distribution of said production.

It is, therefore, understandable if the sindicatos únicos should be the most faithful expression of the constructive, offensive and defensive provision sought by us producers.

Its organisational make-up

A sine qua non of the establishment of sectoral and industrial unions is for at least half of the sections (still trade unions at present) to be in favor of their establishment. Let us imagine that in some locality there are six organised sections engaged in the same branch of activity. Three are all for amalgamation and three against it or, for the present, not disposed to follow the example set by the three amalgamating sections. The latter should proceed as quickly as they are able with the launching of a sindicato único. In any case, it is imperative that they not turn their backs on those sections that are not currently joining the newly created body. On the contrary, the former need to keep the latter briefed on all the business and activity they carry out; it is our belief that such ongoing and amicable liaison will better serve the purpose in mind. Keeping to themselves would exacerbate the differences already in existence, which we would wager were the effective cause of the failure to reach an accommodation. Those sections that fail to amalgamate from the outset must not be marginalised or labelled as ‘scab’. Scabbing is inconceivable other than in organisations that blatantly betray the workers’ cause during strikes, by means of denunciations or other serious actions that well merit the label […]

We believe that this is a faithful reflection of the will of congress on this point, since, while we concede the relevance of the time factor in having these resolutions adopted in principle, we also mean to see them implemented, as briefly outlined above, within a reasonable time frame; which will rule out the endless negotiations that might outwardly be caused by a troublesome focus on personalities.

Let us allow time for the establishment of sindicatos únicos, but, once these are in place, let us also set a period of grace within which the unaffiliated can revise and amend their performance prior to their being excluded from the broad workers’ movement.

Some congress accords

Motion 7: In battles between capital and labor, unions affiliated to the Confederation are obliged to give preference to direct-action methods, as long as there are no bona fide circumstances of genuine force majeure requiring recourse to different approaches.

Motions 19 and 22: Professional politicians can never represent workers’ organisations and the latter must see to it that they are not based in any political premises.

Motion 21: The unions have an imperative duty to see to it by all permissible means that the women—partners, daughters, etc.,—living alongside them and working alongside them in some industry or trade, are organised into unions.

In mixed trade unions, the steering committees should be mixed also, so that women take an interest in their battles and personally commit to their economic emancipation.

Motion 26: As long as there is a company in any given locality paying its operatives the set rate and employing unionised workers, no trade union shall provide labor to any other employer not meeting the same conditions. Nevertheless, when the work that needs doing is such as to be of direct benefit to the organisation, labor costs may be reduced with the consent of the comrades who are to perform it and of the unions to which they belong.

Motions 40, 43, 44 and 50: a) There is a duty upon every union member to do whatever he may to thwart the exploitation of minors. b) Under no pretext and in no sector will overtime be worked as long as there are members of that trade without jobs, and if the union, to which the comrade who is obliged to work overtime belongs, reckons it is strong enough to do so, it shall not countenance overtime under any circumstances. c) Those trades that have successfully imposed a maximum working day of eight hours are to help the rest to secure the same victory and then, on the say-so of their Federations, can target the introduction of the standard rate of pay, circumstances permitting.

Motion 47: a) Bodies that do not constitute professional or trade combinations for the purpose of standing up to capital should have no direct input into matters affecting the unions: but congress looks sympathetically upon those that uphold a social ideal consonant with the interests of the proletariat working outside of the unions and on behalf of the emancipation of the producer class. b) Rationalist teachers, having rendered sterling service to the working class and being a necessary factor in the struggle for emancipation, may have a direct input into union business, as long as they are organised as a body.

Motion 48: No comrade who is not from a given trade or locality may be appointed to committees and federations within a locality. But when it comes to regional congresses or gatherings, a comrade from the locality wherein the delegating union is based or the one where the meeting is due to be held may be appointed as delegate […]

Motion 37: This working party is minded that the most practical means of boosting the dignity and the morale and profiles of ‘handicapped’ comrades is for the Regional Committee to have an input into handicapped organisations, supporting these materially, taking a hand in centres of production (already or yet to be established) where handicapped persons engage in manual tasks, as well as having an ongoing, general input into artistic and musical associations.

It is our belief that by so doing and by drawing them into our bosom, this organisation will largely be able to avert begging and, on the other hand, will also avert their having to ply for trade on the streets. Provided that the local committees first draw these comrades into the broader workers’ organisation, it wrests them away from those reactionary protective agencies currently manipulating them according to their whims.

As a result, this working party believes that it would be extremely useful to introduce collective workshops. Said workshops should operate under the administrative supervision of the workers’ organisation.

With an eye to technical operation from the industrial point of view, those nominated for this task should themselves be handicapped persons versed in the various industries in which said workshops might be engaged.

Such problems as might arise in terms of proper ­development and expansion relate to the distribution and sale of manufactured goods, and in order to do away with this difficulty, the Municipality should, at the urging of the working class, be applied to for a number of fixed outlets in the busiest parts of the city, as long as those outlets are no blight upon the city’s appearance or the free movement of citizens. As well, outlets should be located at the gates of the markets, in conditions akin to those outlined earlier in this resolution.

As a result, therefore, it is our view that in order to do away with street begging, such workshops and fixed outlets should be set up, where the public could go to purchase manufactured goods. As to the internal operation of such workshops, this should differ from what we might regard as collective workshop activity.

By which we mean that the essential point is to furnish the handicapped with raw materials and that the full product of the manufactured goods should be paid to the individual manufacturer, except for a small deduction to cover commission, lighting and workshop rental costs.27

The statements above offer an economic breakdown of demands designed to do away with exploitation in the future society and to repudiate politicians and Leninists. These were binding upon the CNT’s trade unionism: an ability to open wage-earners’ eyes to hard and fast goals, handled by dedicated, steadfast syndicalists capable of standing up to repression; an eye for the detailed, practical implementation of resolutions; a wide-ranging vision taking in women, children and the disabled. Linked to which, the anarcho-syndicalist leadership was fully alive to its revolutionary mission as well as to the dangers surrounding it, and equipped itself with sound tools.

The sindicato único gathered all the workers of the same firm or locality (if the locality was small enough) under one roof. There was a community of interests and solidarity between skilled workers, specialists and labourers whose differing degrees of skill and pay rates tended to divide and split asunder. Solidarity was not restricted to the mythic slogan “Workers of the world unite”, as it was inside the UGT and European-style trade unionism (long forgotten these days in France, Germany, etc.), and workers stuck together regardless of work distinctions.

Brief review of the historical backdrop

Knowing how CNT personnel operated, one can better understand anarcho-syndicalism’s élan in Spain’s past.

The ideas of the International reached Spain thanks to an Italian deputy dispatched there by Bakunin (on the basis that he enjoyed free rail travel), who conflated the all-embracing ideas of the International with those of Bakunin, who in turn was in favor of encouraging the spread of unionisation by the workers through the Alliance.28 When Marxists took exception to this conflation, a split with the UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores/General Workers’ Union) resulted. The UGT grew rapidly from a membership of 57,000 in 1905 to 148,000 in 1933.

Between 1900 and 1911, the history of the Spanish labour movement was punctuated by many events: The colonial war in Morocco triggered a mutiny by recruits in Barcelona in 1909, in the wake of which the anarchist educationist Francisco Ferrer was executed by firing squad. Anarcho-syndicalist groups, ever-present since the introduction of the socialist ideas of the International Working Men’s Association in 1868, finally began to coordinate. Thanks to this, the CNT had a membership of 30,000 when it was launched in 1911.

One glaring mistake made by the CNT was that it turned a blind eye to colonial exploitation in the Spanish territory in Morocco, and failed to campaign for and alongside the victims of exploitation in the Maghreb. Ángel Pestaña was alone in raising the issue at the 1931 congress, although he did not table a motion through his trade union.29

The upshot of the First World War was that Spanish industry serviced the belligerents, and that exploitation of wage-earners surged as a result. In August 1917, the CNT and UGT made contact with each other and decided to mount a revolutionary general strike together. It failed, thanks to the chicanery of the socialists, summarised thus in the Spanish Cortes by Indalecio Prieto: “Sure, we gave weapons to the People. But it is also true that we did not give them ammunition”.30 In order to foment and orchestrate future labor disputes, the CNT espoused the sindicato único format.

The efficacy of the new format was borne out in 1919. Catalonia’s power company, La Canadiense, was brought to a standstill by a strike mounted in solidarity with eight bookkeeper employees (over their being taken on as permanent staff at a lower rate of pay).31 That solidarity then spread to many power plants and textile plants. The government declared a state of emergency in Catalonia and conscripted the workers who nevertheless refused to return to work. Their demands were for a pay increase, an eight-hour working day and half pay for days spent on strike. That strike began in January at La Canadiense and by the end of February it affected the whole of Catalonia. The strike dragged on into March, and between 24 March and 7 April there was a general strike in place. On 14 April, the employers’ union caved in to all of the demands, including the release of 3,000 arrested workers. Some 100,000 workers had taken part in the strike in Catalonia.

That strike, entirely the handiwork of the CNT, is an example of that organisation’s effectiveness; that year its membership numbered 755,000, which is to say, nearly 10 percent of the working population. In Catalonia alone, the CNT had 252,000 members by 1920, whereas the UGT had 211,000 in the whole of Spain.

In 1922, a CNT delegation was dispatched to the launch of the Third International in Moscow, and decided not to affiliate to the new International in light of the situation of anarchists and the Russian workers. Two Marxists in the delegation—Andrés Nin and Joaquín Maurín—then quit the CNT, and went on to launch the POUM.32

But more serious developments were afoot: the Catalan employers, out for revenge over the La Canadiense strike, armed men who gunned down trade union officers, including the man who had been the inspiration behind the strike tactics—Salvador Seguí. This was the era of pistolerismo (pitting the ‘hired killers’ against the syndicalists). In response, the defense groups were formed. There was all-out struggle between 1919 and 1923.

These were the days of Mussolini and military dictatorships across Europe (Hungary, Bulgaria), and the Spanish employer class needed a strong government. General Primo de Rivera took power in 1923, and not one political group lifted a finger to oppose him. The CNT opted to disband and take its structures underground, though at a local level the unions carried on with their activities, sometimes under a different designation.

During the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the PSOE and the UGT not only failed to oppose the regime, but actually collaborated with it. This explains why the Mussolinian model, followed in Spain, never ruled out the parliamentary road: another effort was to wipe out the CNT by means of state sponsorship of the UGT. Thus the UGT’s general secretary, Largo Caballero, was seconded to the Ministry of Labor as councillor of State. But the dictatorship had no trade union policy; the workers were not taken in. Between 1920 and 1926 the UGT stagnated, with only a slight rise in its membership from 211,000 to 219,000.

Where the cenetistas (CNT personnel) stood was something of an unknown quantity as far as their adversaries were concerned. In fact, since 1927, the CNT had been flanked by an anarchist federation, the FAI (Federación Anarquista Ibérica/Iberian Anarchist Federation, the aspiration being to embrace Portugal as well, though this was never achieved, due to the Salazar dictatorship’s repression), the aim of which was to further the spread of anarchist ideas inside the CNT and across the country.

The dictatorship failed to live up to the ambitions of the Spanish employers who did not take to Mussolini-style dirigiste economics; the left-wing political parties began to stir, and disputes took a more bitter turn. The 1930–1931 period was crucial, for the regime allowed a measure of trade union reorganisation, doubtless on account of possible tensions arising from the 1929 depression. By around 1930, the UGT membership stood at 277,000.

From the Interior minister, General Mola, and following overtures made by Pestaña, the CNT secured the right to organise. Mola went on to become the organiser of the 1936 coup d’état and, in particular, was behind the orders that left-wing leaders be executed en masse and out of hand, without trial.

This was the backdrop against which the April 1931 municipal elections were held, with a clear victory going to the republicans, whereupon a Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931. King Alfonso XIII was no more keen than the employers to be forced into a direct confrontation. He abdicated and left the country. Given that a left-leaning military coup had been put down harshly in December 1930, the right opted to let the left bring discredit upon itself and suffer the impact of the 1929 crash, which was already making itself felt in the land. When this failed to come about, those same forces resorted to violence in 1936.

Over and above any difficulties faced at the top of the trade unions (of which more anon) the workers unionised in their droves: the UGT grew to 1,200,000 members and the CNT to at least 800,000. With that sort of following, the CNT national committee’s secretary was officially the Confederation’s only full-time and paid officer (see the “sham pyramid” below for a more nuanced picture). In fact there were only about twenty comrades who received emoluments or wages for their work—a very small number ­compared with the UGT.

The CNT as a harmonious whole, and the sham pyramid

The leadership, CNT cadres and FAI cadres alike, was drawn from the ranks of the working class and moulded by anarcho-syndicalism, just as they had been from the very beginning under the First International in Spain. The 1870s had seen the emergence of Anselmo Lorenzo, Tomás González Morado (both type-setters) and the like. The creation of the CNT in 1911 brought to prominence men like Galo Díez, José Negre (railway worker) and Manuel Buenacasa (carpenter). 1916–1918 threw up militants such as Salvador Seguí (painter and decorator), Ángel Pestaña (watch-maker) and Juan Peiró (glass-blower). During the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, up popped a group that included Ricardo Sanz, Buenaventura Durruti (metalworker), Juan García Oliver, Francisco Ascaso (these last two waiters), Antonio Ortiz (carpenter), etc. Come the establishment of the Republic, in came the likes of Mariano R. Vázquez (construction worker), Cipriano Mera (bricklayer) and David Antona.… During the civil war along came José Peirats (bricklayer), the Sabaté brothers (Quico Sabaté was a plumber) and Raúl Carballeira, some of whom were to lose their lives in the struggle against Francoism between 1948 and 1960.

From 1870 to 1936 and beyond, there was an uninterrupted succession of tried and tested syndicalists, all of working-class extraction. Those seventy years of militancy and working class self-education in both city and country, from Andalusia to Asturias and Catalonia, constituted the strength of the CNT. This was a mighty strength not ­comparable with and utterly different from what Russia had to show.

In Russia during the nineteenth century, there had been only three flare-ups of agitation: initially, the so-called Decembrists (anti-tsarist agitators drawn from the ranks of the enlightened bourgeoisie), then the exiles drawn from that same class and converted to socialism—like Herzen and Bakunin—and finally the narodniks or Populists, the offspring of the bourgeoisie who turned to the people with social ideas that were very often entirely theoretical.

Practically speaking, workers only had the twenty-five years between 1880 and 1905 to generate their own cadres. The ensuing repression decimated the educated classes and left little scope for the emergence of a fresh crop of youngsters—up until 1917, at any rate. And of the revolutionary leaders, not one was of working class extraction; they were petit bourgeois intellectuals like Lenin or Trotsky or Bukharin, etc., and their chief concern was with devouring one another at the expense of the workers, just as Makhaiski had forecast that they would, back in 1905.33

Leaders drawn from the bourgeoisie never posed a problem for the CNT as it had very few of them: we call to mind the doctors Pedro Vallina and Isaac Puente.34

The second factor accounting for the CNT’s strength was its organization, which was rooted in three things: direct action and the sindicato único, federalism and globalism.

Direct action, as defined and spelled out by the French anarcho-syndicalists at the beginning of the twentieth century, means rejecting State interference in negotiations with the bosses, and insistence upon all demands being met. In the face of it, the bosses are left with only two options: to give in, which meant success for the union and more members for it; or to stand firm, which usually triggered a flurry of strikes. Time and again the boss would hire scabs and strike-breakers who had to be persuaded to show solidarity. A violent response from the bosses, in the form of drafting in scab labour, often triggered violent pressures by a number of groups or individuals that would persuade the bosses to cave in to worker demands.

A typical example of this was the La Canadiense strike mentioned earlier. The very same tactics persisted between 1931 and 1936. When employees of the Telephone Company across Spain came out on strike, the peasants’ union in Ronda decided to support them, and its militants severed many of the telegraph posts across the region. These were union members, most of them illiterate but with a clear and effective political outlook. Lots of folk, highly educated by the standards of formal bourgeois culture, lacked any such sense of the practical.

Federalism guaranteed great flexibility of action, which was crucial given the differences between the regions. Each comarcal (county) or local committee was free to embark on action without having to consult with central committees that might have been more or less au fait with the issues. There was a example of this in 1934: the CNT and UGT could not agree on a joint approach. In Asturias, though, the two UGT and CNT regional organisations entered into a pact of alliance (which just goes to show how influential anarcho-­syndicalist tactics were within the UGT), but within the Asturian regional CNT, the CNT’s local federation in La Felguera rejected the pact. This might, at first glance, seem like a contradiction and a weakness, but it reflected the local situation and actualities of the UGT and CNT. In Aragon between 1934 and 1936, cooperatives and farming ventures were boosted, which was unheard of in other regions.

The third especially distinguishing feature is what we might refer to as globalism.

The CNT never restricted itself to trade unionism and its halls were the venues for literacy classes or Ferrer Guàrdia-type schools for the young. Ever since Francisco Ferrer Guàrdia faced the firing squad in 1909, his schools had carried on with his work under the aegis of the CNT across Spain (except that now they were directed at workers’ sons and daughters, whereas Ferrer had also targeted the offspring of the bourgeoisie).35 Funding support came from some unions, and the teachers, as a rule, were militants who did their teaching at the end of their working day. The study of Esperanto was also very commonplace, as were studies in vegetarianism, naturopathic medicine, contraception, sex education (from 1910 on), women’s emancipation and excursions. All of these activities were mirrored in reviews, as well as in the trade union press. Allow me to offer a small selection of the latter from 1932: Solidaridad Obrera (Barcelona, a daily newspaper), Tierra y Libertad (Barcelona, a weekly), La Tierra (Madrid, a like-minded weekly), La Revista Blanca (Barcelona, monthly), Nosotros (Valencia, monthly), Redención (Alcoy), Acción (Cadiz), as well as newer publications like CNT (Madrid, daily), Orto (Valencia), Solidaridad Proletaria (Seville), La Voz del Campesino (Jerez) and so on. Not to mention pamphlets published under the auspices of unions or individuals and like-minded series, such as the (monthly) La Novela Ideal.36

Such multifaceted activity was neither redundant nor overdoing it. There was a point-by-point challenge to Catholic culture: starting at birth when first names like Acracio, Floreal, Germinal, Helios, etc., or Luz, Libertaria, Alba, Acracia, etc. were given—rather than Jesús, Salvador, Ignacio or Iñaki (after Jesuit founder Ignatius of Loyola), or, to take some female examples, Covadonga (the first mock-historical victory over the Muslims, featuring Santiago Matamoros, butcher of the unbelievers), Amparo (the protection of the Virgin Mary), Soledad or Dolores (a reference to the suffering of the Virgin), not to mention the litany of locations where there had been apparitions of the Virgin, places popularising names such as Pilar, Begoña, Guadalupe, Montserrat, Nuria, etc. Later, after death, atheists or poor Christians were excluded from Catholic graveyards. Even the preferred literary authors such as Tolstoy, Zola, Multatuli and Panaït Istrati37 were different from the writers favoured by most bourgeois.

Another target for criticism was marxism (of the Leninist variety), its theory and practice within the USSR, which were depicted as what they were: the new ideology of the exploiter classes, a cloak donned so that they might continue their rule over the workers. The lessons of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus, Rocker and Nettlau were published in book and pamphlet format. And there were lots of books and pamphlets examining marxism from the theoretical viewpoint (Bakunin, Kropotkin, Cafiero and Rocker) as well as from the practical, including the writings of Russian anarchists (Yartchuk, Gorelik, Voline, Arshinov, Makhno) and those of a number of cenetistas who had been to Russia (people such as Pestaña, Pérez Combina, Martín Gudell and Horacio Prieto). Not to mention propaganda arriving from Latin America (Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay), relations with which were very close indeed.

However, the CNT fell well short of flawlessness: hence the notion of the sham pyramid.

In hierarchical systems, power and the ruling class sit at the top and the exploited majority make up the base. The whole set-up might be represented as a pyramid, a battery of orders emanating from the top down.

But what has this to do with the CNT, which, in theory, adopted a more horizontal arrangement?

Some things in history represent anomalies: the creation of the FAI, anticipating the provisions of the Arshinov Platform, i.e. control of the trade union by an outside, foreign body (See Appendix IV below), the flirtations with alliances in the 1920s and the damaging controversy between faístas and treintistas. A few remarks about the latter should help explain the two preceding ones.

Certain cenetistas had their suspicions as to unspoken horse-trading going on between a group accused of reformism (Peiró and Pestaña and the so-called treintistas) and the republicans. The FAI became the home of attacks on reformism. In actual fact, a third tendency emerged, a group made up of Durruti, Ascaso, García Oliver, etc., who craved social revolution and cashed in on the popularity of the FAI whilst setting up a group that was answerable to nobody.

In what way was this falling-out any different than the falling-out between Trotskyists and Stalinists at around the same time?

The pro-Stalin Leninists or the pro-Trotsky faction who were in the gulags with the Italian-Croatian former-Trotskyist Antón Ciliga, fell out over matters relating to tactics and moves designed to seize control of the levers of the organisation, manipulating meetings and congresses as if the rank and file workers—whom they all purported to represent and lead—were brainless and incapable of articulating their opinions.38

Inside the CNT, the opinions of all the membership were actually sounded.

The tactics of attempted revolution, heralded by numerous spontaneous ventures spearheaded by the rank and file (see Appendix II below) demonstrated that some of the membership was in step with the FAI, but that there were serious and highly damnable shortcomings when it came to laying the groundwork for attack.

In fact, the Spanish left could not bring itself to introduce the social and economic changes the country so sorely needed, even from the point of view of a forward-looking capitalism, if only for straightforward surgical reasons and out of the merest regard for the lives of the majority of the population. The workers, hungry for immediate, real and definitive socio-economic changes could not understand the snail’s pace. The masses craved change and yearned for social revolution.

At the grassroots level in Asturias in 1934, a formal alliance had been brokered, as we have seen, between the UGT and the CNT. And out of a socialist-organised uprising there spontaneously emerged a workers’ alliance, under the UHP. To all workers, the UHP became a synonym for immediate revolutionary social change.

All of this ensured that the insults and mutual abuse swapped between the cenetista bigwigs (well-ensconced leaders barely—or not at all—answerable to the rank and file) were outweighed by the mutual reconciliation that culminated at the Zaragoza congress of May 1936. But the gulf between the rank and file membership and the leadership was not tackled, no more than by rotation of offices, which was not so much part of CNT practice as a response to police action when the unions were forced to fill vacancies created by the arrest of comrades.

In reality, within the CNT there were two lines on revolution and libertarian communism (see Appendix V below): that of the bigwigs who sought a revolution from above on a date of their own choosing, and that of the grassroots members out for immediate direct action designed to trigger a thoroughgoing social change in the workplace, in the barrio or at village level.

From the stances adopted in 1936–1939 and in 1944–1948, we may infer that the bigwigs believed in the value of alliance with some of the bourgeoisie—and later, even with the monarchy—as a means of directing and bolstering the CNT. This was utter nonsense, as would have been obvious had they actually explored writings and experiences of Bakunin, Kropotkin and anarchists who had emigrated from the USSR. This was all the more nonsensical when they had themselves witnessed the treachery of German socialists and like-minded trade unionists, calculated to eradicate revolutionary workers (Spartakists and direct actionists), and were aware of US intervention in its Central American backyard.

The CNT bigwigs emblazoned a superficial anarcho-syndicalism and anarchism (see Appendices VI, IV and V), which explains how they could so glibly and lastingly enter the governments of Catalonia and Spain (respectively, September 1936–May 1937 and November 1936–May 1937, and again from April 1938 until March 1939).

It is telling that there has been no analysis of the CNT’s collaboration in government between 1936 and 1939, not in exile (pending a congress within Spain) nor within the Peninsula (driven by the need to organise first and foremost and to head off controversy), for which reason the polemics endure, and theoretical confusion persists. This is why it is important to know the actual numbers of militants on the payroll of the Organisation. As Pestaña has it:

The claim in public that we are against paid officials, and the private understanding that in the day to day running of the organisation we have them, strikes me as an act of hypocrisy out of place in our group where we are forever claiming full responsibility for our actions.

Officially, we have no paid officials today, but the editors of Solidaridad Obrera are paid.39 Off the record, under the table, so to speak, there are two paid and permanent posts on the National Committee; one or two—more often two than one—on the Regional Committee of Catalonia; two paid posts within the Barcelona Local Federation; and a number of Barcelona unions, some of which also have two or three paid officials. But let us repeat that this is off the record and such payments are justified by invoking the tasks they perform.

Not that the Catalan organisation is alone in having paid officials: the practice applies to virtually every region of Spain.40

Having thirty-odd paid officials out of a membership of about 550,000 and a catchment area twice that size is a trifling matter in terms of material benefits, but it is huge in terms of influence and the exercise of power over the rest.

That situation was flying in the face of the 1919 congress, which had decided that only the general secretary would be paid (approximately the wage of a skilled worker). But the “non-remuneration policy operated a selection of leaders among the most dedicated, men who owned nothing and remained entrenched in their refus de parvenir”.41 With the upshot that most of the CNT officials carried out their trade union duties after the day’s work was done and sometimes had to lay out money for the travel essential to keeping in touch.

Another weakness was the rejection, for fear of bureaucratisation, of the federations of industry for which some militants lobbied. According to the militants, these federations had to be organised along the lines of horizontal and vertical trusts (for, say, the metalworking, transport industries, etc., embracing all of the unions engaged in them), these being better suited to the concentration of capital whilst also offering a foretaste of the unions taking over the running of the economy themselves. Without a shadow of a doubt, they would have enabled a clearer appreciation of what needed collectivising. And all the propaganda books and pamphlets peddling libertarian communism (above all those from Isaac Puente, inspired by Besnard) described a post-revolutionary regime, organised by and for the workers, without the transitional period called for by the Marxists, and with federations of industry and agriculture and inter-related regional bodies.

Another drawback was follower-ism and leader-ism, even in the absence of bureaucratisation. This was manifest in culture, in the expertise—be it economic, political or technical (e.g. in the manufacture of explosives)—that some militants had acquired, despite exhausting toil for poverty wages. Such militants possessed experience very often superior to the bourgeois professionals who operated in the same field (such as that displayed by Peiró when he unmasked police skullduggery during the years of pistolerismo in Barcelona), and so they wielded an intellectual sway over many union members.42 In fact, this is commonplace in group sociology, as is evident in the case of José Díaz, who defected from the CNT to the Communist Party along with the membership of his trade union, the dockworkers of Seville; as well as Andrés Nin and his influence in Lérida; Stalin and the Georgians; Trotsky and the Russian Jews; and so on. Structures and a grounding in anarcho-syndicalism were therefore not enough to thwart this deviation, although they did minimise it: the stream of militants whom we have named proves that the mere existence of a leader was no impediment to the training of leadership material.

The breaking dawn and shortsightedness

The UHP articulated the deep-seated yearnings of the Spanish workers, as did all the attempted revolutions since January 1932. Above and beyond party political squabbles, currents and factions within each current, reality itself cried out for social change.

Contrary to the experience elsewhere in Europe, Spanish workers had known no profound changes in the feudal, Catholic, landed-property system because of the bourgeoisie’s failure to force the pace. The absence of left- or right-wing politics and the tentative, timid and sluggish tactics of the republican governments from 1931 onwards merely fuelled their impatience. The Second Republic of 1931 proclaimed itself to be “a democratic republic of workers of all sorts, organised into a regimen of Freedom and Justice” (Article 1 of the constitution). It boasted, “The Spanish state has no official religion” (Article 3) and that “Spain abjures war as an instrument of national policy”, in addition to a long litany of moderately interesting measures. This was empty rhetoric bereft of economic equality and with the admixture of brutal, even criminal repression by the forces of order. But the poor took for granted that the Republic was now a reality and that it was poised to work in their interests.

Against this backdrop of expectations and demands with regard to social change, the apparent defeats suffered by libertarian communism in 1932, in January and December 1933, and the UHP in Asturias in 1934 actually proved to be glimmers of hope, paving the way for further attempted revolutions.

In 1936, the left came together in order to win the elections. The CNT discreetly urged recourse to the ballot box and the figures clearly suggest it had an impact: in 1933 the left claimed 3,200,000 votes, 20 percent of the turn-out; in 1936 that figure rose to 4,800,000, or 35 percent—meaning an additional 1,600,000 votes. Of course, we also have to include in this figure a number of returned economic migrants—who had left as the result of the aftermath of the world depression in 1929—plus younger, newly qualifying voters and the ­franchise granted to women in 1931.

What might the CNT input have been? The figure of 1,000,000 votes, which was bandied about by the CNT itself, strikes me as acceptable.

The left secured a slender 1.1 percent majority with a fifty-three-seat43 margin over the right, thanks to the system of proportional representation in use. Actually, the right ­retained much of its enormous clout.

The most remarkable change was the strides made by the Communist Party during this period, with fourteen deputies returned as against just one in 1933. Just to review the results: the Party took 12,900 votes in Málaga in 1933; by 1936 this had risen to 52,750. The 3,000 Communist Party voters in Cádiz in 1933 soared to 97,000. Oviedo’s 16,830 swelled to 170,500 and so on. There was a baffling paradox in that the membership of the Party, according to the Party’s own sources, sat at between 17,000 and 30,000,44 and nationally the Party had taken 1,800,000 votes. The only explanation is that it raked in CNT voters, and, in fact, thirteen of its fourteen deputies came from regions where anarchists were in the majority.

This political faux pas by the cenetistas (boosting their fiercest ideological foe) can be explained by their grudges against the UGT and the PSOE.

The Popular Front got a rapturous welcome, and pressure from the people secured the much-wanted release of political prisoners. As in 1931 there were no thoroughgoing reforms announced. The police continued to open fire on workers. The government was incapable of taking effective action. Right-wing outrages proliferated, thanks to the handiwork of the Falange, a pro-Mussolini group led by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the son of the man who had been dictator from 1923 to 1927. Tensions were running high on the left, as highlighted by the headlines in Solidaridad Obrera between 1 and 18 July 1936:

Should the UGT fail to come up with a prompt response to the cordial appeal issuing from the Extra-ordinary Congress of the CNT, the responsibility for what may ensue will fall entirely upon the heads of the socialists.45

The venture is a mighty one, especially with the trapeze-artists of the POUM on the scene. But enthusiasm on your part, plus pressure from the Confederation will steer you to victory.46 (There is a cartoon by Gallo showing hands bound with manacles bearing the initials UGT.)47

(Another Gallo cartoon shows a woman gagged—the revolutionary press—and a man carrying a hammer and sickle urging her to be quiet: behind him looms a monster marked with a swastika.)48

Enough! Only lunatics and agents provocateurs can imagine a connection between fascism and anarchism […] Let the gentlemen from the Popular Front watch their step!49

Lack of vision in fraught times and the counter-­revolutionary behaviour of Spanish marxism opened the gates to fascism.50

And another Gallo cartoon, at the foot of a photograph from the CNT construction strike in Madrid, a fiefdom of the UGT: two pistols marked UGT and CNT are trained on each other with the caption: “No!”51

The army’s attempted coup d’état was the logical consequence of the republican government’s passivity. Yet the CNT had, months earlier, anticipated the course that events were going to take:

[…] Right-wing elements are ready to trigger an army revolt […] Morocco seems to be the main concentration and epicenter of the plot […] If the plotters light the fire, opposition must be taken to its ultimate consequences, and the liberal bourgeoisie and its Marxist allies must not be allowed to stem the flood of events, in the event that fascist rebellion is nipped in the bud […] Fascism versus social revolution […] Keep a watchful eye out, comrades!52

18 July 1936 marshalled all the usual enemies against a common foe (with the bourgeoisie and authoritarian left—with the odd exception—lining up against the libertarians).

13 Rosa Luxembourg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions, (1906).

14 Charles Gide, La coopération dans les pays latins, 1926–1927 (Paris), p. 144.

15 NEP (New Economic Policy) introduced by Lenin, freeing up individual trading, meaning the petite bourgeoisie, the Party’s economy having proven itself ineffective.

16 José Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española, Tomo 1.

17 Fernanda Romeu, Las clases trabajadoras en España (Madrid 1970), p. 40.

18 According to Según Romero Maura, “The Spanish Case” in Government and Opposition (1970).

19 Díaz del Moral, Historia de las agitaciones campesinas andaluzas—Córdoba (antecedentes para una reforma agraria) (Madrid, 1967 reprint) pp. 447–448, 170–171, 182 and 285–286. This study, which dates from 1923, was not published until 1928, due to the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, father of the founder of the Spanish fascist party (Falange), José Primo de Rivera.

20 K. L. Maidanik, Ispanski proletariat v natsionalno-revoliutsionarioni voine (The Spanish Proletariat in the National-Revolutionary War) (Moscow 1960), p. 35.

21 Joaquín Maurín, 1964 afterword to Revolución y contrarrevolución en España (1935) (reissued, Paris 1966), pp. 242–244.

22 Galo Díez, Esencia ideológica del anarcosindicalismo (Gijón 1922), pp. 10, 38. The italics are mine.

23 Artículos madrileños de Salvador Seguí, (Madrid 1978), pp. 67–70 [Interview in El Heraldo, a bourgeois newspaper, Madrid, ­October 1919].

24 Op. cit., pp 135–136 [See Vida Nueva, 12 June 1922].

25 Op. cit. p. 284–285 [A talk on “Anarchism and Trade Unionism” given in La Mola prison in Mahón, 31 December 1920].

26 Ángel Pestaña, ¿Sindicato único? (Orientaciones Sobre organización sindical) (Madrid 1921), pp. 19–21.

27 Memoria del Congreso de Sants en 1918. Nuestro parecer Sobre algunos de los acuerdos adoptados [being the National Committee’s commentary on the Sants regional congress in 1918], extracts taken from Manuel Lladonosa’s El congrès de Sants (Barcelona 1974) pp. 171–174, 179–181 and 184–185. Many of these accords were then passed at the national plenum of the CNT’s 1919 congress.

28 The Alliance (Alianza) was a body that coordinated hand-picked militants to accelerate and further the advances made by the workers, and kept these safe from politicians during the act of revolution, which it believed was well within the capability of the masses. Marx and Engels reckoned that, initially at any rate, the proletariat needed to be committed to the political struggle (for several years or even decades). They did not believe in the capacity of the working man. As formulated by Lenin, this meant that the Party’s role was to introduce the elements of science and consciousness, or order and discipline. Bakunin was opposed to future leadership structures: “Were the International able to organise itself as a State, we, its heartfelt, impassioned supporters, should turn into its most rabid foes”. See Bakunin Crítica y Acción (Libros de Anarres 2006). For this very reason, the Alliance was at no time a party in the Leninist sense.

29 Pestaña declared: “I move that the Confederation should seek for the protectorate zone in Africa the very same political and social conditions as other regions of Spain are to enjoy. That the Moors in the Spanish Protectorate be deemed citizens just as we are, and enjoy the same rights and the same duties and be shown the same respect as any of us. That all our social legislation be enforced there, that the view not be taken that within Spain there is one region whose inhabitants enjoy a lower status […] the impact of this resolution might prove revolutionary in that it might trigger enduring malaise among the Moroccans who are under the rule of other countries”. Memoria del Congreso extraordinario celebrado en Madrid los días 11 al 16 de junio de 1931 (Barcelona 1932), pp. 85–86.

30 José Peirats, La CNT en la revolución española (Toulouse 1953) Vol. I, p. 18.

31 Albert Balcells, El sindicalisme a Barcelona (1916–1923) (Barcelona 1961), p. 69.

32 The POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista/Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification) was an amalgamation of four Marxist groups active since 1930. One had been led by Andrés Nin, who, between 1921 and 1929, had been a supporter within the USSR of the dissident Bolsheviks and Trotsky—although he fell out with Trotsky in 1933 when Trotsky insisted on his entering the PSOE. The amalgamation was supposed to form a CP that would not be under Moscow’s thumb. Amalgamation was achieved in 1935 after a year of fraught discussions with an eye to the 1936 elections. The USSR-backed CP regarded the POUM as a gang of Trotskyist and fascist traitors, and Trotsky regarded them as bourgeois revisionists.

33 Makhaiski or Makhayev took the view that militants of bourgeois extraction were out to seize power for themselves, on the pretext of backing the workers. See Alexandre Skirda Le Socialisme des intellectuels, Jan Waclav Makhaiski (Paris 2001).

34 Not until the 1930s did Federica Montseny join the CNT, since she had previously espoused a critical line on anarcho-syndicalism.

35 Ferrer Guàrdia was a free-mason, and in that capacity, urged a de facto alliance between the atheistic, left-leaning bourgeoisie and the workers’ movement, a nonsensical view in that it involved no real pursuit of social revolution nor attempt to end wage slavery. Free-masons were quite commonplace within the CNT. One resolution moved at the 1926 Zaragoza congress—but not mentioned in the official summary published in exile in France—recommended that free-masons should not hold positions of responsibility, as borne out in the August 1983 written testimony of Manuel Fabra, a free-mason and CNT member, and of Ramón Álvarez, a CNT member hostile to free-masonry.

36 Renée Lamberet, Mouvements ouvriers et Socialistes (chronologie et bibliographie): L’Espagne (1750–1936) (Paris 1963).

37 Multatuli, who was a Dutch writer, and Panaït Israti, who was Romanian, were well known to older CNT members.

38 This was a logical Leninist stance, comparable to that of bourgeois politicians when their proposals are rejected at the ballot box. But in the USSR, the workers were already in the know; hence the sensitivity of the observations in Antón Ciliga in his 1938 book The Russian Enigma.

39 Pestaña attended the 1931 congress as representative of the administration of Solidaridad Obrera, which consisted of its editorial board (three employees), its administrators (three employees), its printing staff (five??), its panel of contributors (three), foreign correspondents (three), making a total somewhere between twelve and seventeen. See Memoria, Congreso extraordinario celebrado en Madrid del 11 al 16 de junio 1931 (a multi-copied text, no place, no date cited, published in France), 11th edition, p. 108.

40 Ángel Pestaña in Solidaridad Obrera, No. 409, 24 April 1934, reprinted in Ángel Pestaña, Trayectoria sindicalista (with foreword by Antonio Elorza) (Madrid 1974), pp. 678–679.

41 Maura Romero, writing in Government and Opposition, 1970.

42 A shrewd French (though actually Russian-born) observer at the 1931 congress, Nicolas Lazarévitch, noted: “As to the National Committee, it was taken to task for having failed to intervene with due vigour and forcefulness in response to the repression in Seville. The speeches were very violent, and some very harsh views were expressed. In spite of this, all it took was for Peiró, the director of Solidaridad Obrera, to adopt a hang-dog look of an accused man standing before the court and acknowledge his mistakes for the heartstrings of delegates to be given a tug and for them ultimately to decide not to proceed with any changes to the organisation’s leadership bodies”. N. Lazarévitch, À travers les révolutions espagnoles (Paris 1972), p. 20 (first published in La Révolution prolétarienne, No. 121, November 1931).

43 See Manuel Cruells El 6 d’octubre a Catalunya and Javier Tusell Las elecciones del Frente Popular (Madrid 1971).

44 Historia del Partido Comunista de España (Paris & Warsaw 1960), p. 111.

45 9 July 1936, front page headline.

46 12 July 1936, apropos of a strike in Sardañola at the Uralita (cement) plant.

47 14 July 1936, p. 1.

48 15 July 1936, p. 1.

49 16 July 1936, p. 1.

50 17 July 1936, p. 1.

51 17 July 1936.

52 Statement from the CNT National Committee, 14 February 1936, as reprinted in Peirats, op. cit. Vol. 1. According to the review Noir & Rouge No. 41, p. 16, the statement was drafted by the CNT’s then national secretary, Horacio M. Prieto. It is interesting to compare this outlook with that of Pestaña, by then leader of the Syndicalist Party: “Q. Is the rightist menace—of a coup d’état—one to be reckoned with, for instance? A. No! They have missed the boat. As far as the Right is concerned, the period of instability—which was very worrying at times—is over. A purge of the army and machinery of state will strip them of any chance of acting. Their current modus operandi—assassinations and terrorist attacks—is proof of their weakness”. [Interview of 18 May 1936, published in La Révolution prolétarienne, 10 June 1936, p. 224]. There is anecdotal evidence in José Robuster’s testimony, as it appears in Víctor Alba’s Colectivizadores, to bear out just how shortsighted Pestaña was with regard to what happened in Barcelona on 18 July 1936.