PART
3:
ANARCHISM IN ACTION
You probably agree that what you have read so far are mostly good ideas. You probably accept that the wealth of society should be distributed equally and also that ordinary people should have a full say in the running of their lives. Like many people who hear about Anarchism you may believe that it is a good set of ideas but unfortunately it would never work. That people are naturally greedy and selfish, if there was no government to look after our interests there would be “complete chaos”.
It has already been stated that we believe capitalism is chaos. It does not and never can meet the needs of ordinary people. On the other hand, a society run by those who actually produce (the working class) can. This kind of society is not a myth we have dreamed up. At various stages of our history it has become a reality. Working and poor people have taken their destinies into their own hands and made a success of it. Far from being naturally greedy and selfish, these experiences actually show that given the right conditions people can co-operate and act in a spirit of mutual aid.
As Anarchists we trace our tradition back to the first International Workingmens’ Association in the 1870s where the Anarchists formed a distinct tendency influenced mainly by the ideas of Michael Bakunin [8]. Some of the main branches of the First International were Anarchist in orientation. Since then, Anarchism has always been deeply rooted in the working class. We do not spend our time plotting in back rooms. For us our activity means bringing our politics into the daily struggles of the factories, the offices and the communities.
Anarchists have been involved in most of the major modern revolutions. We have been there arguing and fighting for the right and necessity of working people running society as opposed to any so-called Marxist or “socialist party” or bureaucratic or nationalist elite. Anarchism has historically had a massive impact on the struggles of workers, working peasants and the poor. In fact, May Day, the international workers day, was begun in the 1880s to commemorate the framing and execution of 8 Anarchists in the USA. Called the “Haymarket Martyrs”, these comrades were legally murdered after they played a central role in organising the 1886 general strike for an 8-hour day, which brought out tens of thousands of Black and White workers. In Chicago, the Anarchist-oriented Central Labour Union, in which many of the Martyrs were key activists, brought out 65,000 workers.
In fact, our ideas dominated the revolutionary left across the world in the early twentieth-century. And in the first half of the twentieth century, Anarchism was at one point or another the main political influence on the trade unions of many countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, France, Mexico, Paraguay, Portugal, Spain and Uruguay. There were strong Anarchist minority union currents in countries such as Britain, Bulgaria, China, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the USA. Not that these “minorities” were small: the Italian Anarchist unionists numbered over 800,000 in 1920! Other Anarchist movements of varying sizes and influence existed throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, South and East Asia, parts of Africa, and in Europe and North America.
Almost the entire Anarchist movement opposed the imperialist First World War, suffering bannings, detentions and deportations. The Anarchist movement played a central part in the revolutionary wave of workers struggles that took place from 1917-22, launching near revolutions in many countries, such as Spain, Argentina and Italy. They were central to the fight against the rise of fascism in Europe, Latin America and Japan. They realised that the Russian Revolution of 1917 (see below) had been destroyed by the Communist Party, which built State capitalism and one-party dictatorship on the bones of the masses. Anarchists also played an important role in anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles across the world, including those in China, Cuba, Ireland, Korea, Macedonia, Mexico and Nicaragua. In South Africa, Anarchists were central to the formation of the country’s first radical Black-centred trade union movement, the Industrial Workers of Africa, in 1917.
From the start, Anarchism has everywhere consistently fought against exploitation, authoritarianism, colonialism, environmental destruction, racism, sexism and the oppression of gays and lesbians. It was weakened by the rise of fascism and Communism in the 1920s and 1930s, but the movement has strongly re-emerged across the world since the 1970s. In Spain and Sweden, tens of thousands of workers are currently organised in revolutionary trade unions. In Nigeria, the Awareness League (AL) was organised in 1989. Its Charter states that it is “inspired by, and committed to the ideals, principals, objectives, goals, ends and purposes of anarcho-syndicalism (anarchist unionism)”. The AL is active in the struggle against the military regime. Anarchism continues to grow in influence in countries as diverse as Venezuela, Turkey, Japan and Ireland.
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION [9]
“We say to the Russian workers, peasants, soldiers, revolutionists: above all continue the revolution. Continue to organise yourselves solidly and unite your new organisations: your communes, your committees, your soviets. Continue, with firmness and perseverance, always and everywhere to participate more extensively and more and more effectively in the economic life of the country, continue to take into your hands, that is into the hands of your organisations, all the raw materials and all the instruments indispensable to your labour. Continue the revolution. Do not hesitate to face the solution of the burning questions of the present. Create everywhere the necessary organisations to achieve these solutions. Peasants, take the land and put it at the disposal of your committees. Workers, proceed to put in the hands of and at the disposal of your own social organisations - everywhere on the spot - the mines and the subsoil, the enterprises and the establishments of all sorts, the works and the factories, the workshops and the machines”.
Golos
Truda (the Voice of Labour)
Russian Anarchist paper August 25th 1917
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was truly a turning point in modern history. For the first time the working class and working peasants took control and asserted their right to run society. But the revolution was destroyed by the Communist Party, despite resistance by the relatively small Anarchist movement.
At the time of the revolution in 1917, which overthrew the Tsar (king) and the capitalist Provisional Government, there were about 10,000 active Anarchists in Russia, not including the movement in the Ukraine led by Nestor Makhno (see below). There were at least four Anarchists on the Bolshevik-dominated Military Revolutionary Committee which engineered the seizure of power in October.
More importantly, Anarchists were involved in the Factory Committees that had sprung up after the February Revolution. These were based in workplaces, elected by mass assemblies of the workers and given the role of overseeing the running of the factory and co-ordinating with other workplaces in the same industry and region. Anarchists were particularly influential among the miners, dockers, postal workers, bakers and played an important part in the All-Russian Conference of Factory Committees which met in Petrograd on the eve of the October Revolution. It was to these Factory Committees (and to similar peasant organisations in the countryside) that the Anarchists looked as the basis for a new self-management that would be ushered in after the revolution. They resisted all efforts to undermine the Committees and take away their power.
How the Communist Party destroyed the Russian Revolution
The Anarchists had co-operated with the Communist Party of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin in seizing power from the ruling class, believing that once captured, power could be diffused. It was not long before they saw that the real intention of the Bolsheviks (Communist Party) was to take power and keep it. Their Marxist concept of socialism did not allow them to trust in the ability of ordinary people to run society in their own interests.
Authoritarian politics of Marxism
Although some Bolshevik pamphlets, such as Lenin’s State and Revolution (1918), appeared to support a decentralised and democratic socialism, these rare works were directly contradicted by the bulk of Communist writings and practices.
As we discussed earlier, the Communist Party believed that socialism had to be imposed from above by an authoritarian State under the control of a single vanguard party. As the Communist leader Trotsky wrote in his book Terrorism and Communism, “socialism” meant “authoritarian leadership... centralised distribution of the labour force... the workers’ State (considering itself) entitled to send any worker wherever his labour may be needed”. He advocated the militarisation of labour in which, as he put it [10]:
“the working class... must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded just like soldiers. Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps”.
Or, as another leader, Lenin actually yelled at the January 1921 All-Russian Congress of Miners [11]: “Does every worker know how to rule the country? Practical people know that these are fairy tales”.
By this measure, Lenin’s own State and Revolution was a sustained fairy tale that did not reflect his true beliefs.
On the running of industry under so-called “socialism”, Lenin had this to say in 1918 [12]:
“The revolution demands in the interest of socialism [!!] that the masses unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process... [there must be] unquestioning obedience to the orders of individual representatives of the Soviet government during work time... iron discipline, with unquestioning obedience to the will of a single person, the Soviet leader”.
The Communists smash workers’ control in 1917-8
Clearly, workers control in the sense of workers actually self-managing the factories was never part of the Communists’ agenda.
Thus, power was wrested away from the Factory Committees and workers councils and placed in the hands of bodies controlled by the Bolsheviks. The first step in suppressing the Factory Committees was when they were subjected to control by Bolshevik-dominated trade unions. These unions were then put under the thumb of the state, which was totally dominated by the Bolsheviks. Worker control of production was then rapidly destroyed. In 1919, only 10,8% of enterprises were run by individual managers; by 1920, this figure had risen to 82%. In many cases, the managers were the same people the workers had expelled from the factories in 1917!
A similar process took place in the Red Guards; the workers militias set up in the early stages of the revolution. In March 1918, the right of ordinary soldiers to elect their officers was removed by the Communist leader Trotsky, and in mid-1918, nearly 50,000 officers from the old regime were drafted into the new army (now renamed the “Red Army” and placed under the control of the Communist-dominated State) and given commanding posts.
Not a “workers’ state” but an engine of oppression
The so-called “workers state” that the Bolsheviks set up after October 1917 was based on the subordination of the workers councils and Factory Committees to a State comprised of Bolshevik officials and bureaucrats from the old Tsarist regime. This State - the “Soviet Union” - was not based on workers power. The April 1918 constitution of the Soviet Union stated that all workers councils were to be “subordinate to the corresponding higher organ of the Soviet power”, which ultimately meant the Sovnarkom, a Cabinet wholly dominated by Communist leaders. In fact, the new State looked a lot like the old Tsarist one: the civil service was largely run by officials from the old system, for example, in late 1918, on average, less than 10% of the senior officials of key ministries such as Finance were actually members of the Communist Party.
The Russian Communist Party itself had a tiny membership of 600,000 in a country of about 80 million in 1920. Almost none of its leaders came from the toiling masses and the Party did not have a large working class or peasant membership: in 1923, two-thirds of its members occupied administrative posts and only one in seven was a manual worker. This in a predominantly working class and working peasant country!
Lenin’s systematic repression of the left
The Communist Party also practised systematic repression against its left-wing opponents such as the Anarchists. Once the Anarchists’ usefulness to them had ended, and once the Anarchists began to criticise the policies of the new State (coining the term “state-capitalism”), the Communist Party ensured they were suppressed. On the pretext of “fighting crime”, a massive wave of raids, arrests and the (typically permanent) closing down of Anarchist presses across the country began on 9 April 1918 [13]. Fighting broke out in Moscow where 26 Anarchist centres were raided, 40 Anarchists killed and wounded, and 500 taken prisoner. Similar raids followed in Petrograd and the provinces. In May, most of the main Anarchist papers were closed down, usually permanently. The victims included openly pro-Bolshevik Anarchists who campaigned to convert other Anarchists to communism and Marxism! The raids also included Anarchists in the Soviets and Factory Committees.
The April 1918 raids set a pattern that would culminate in the final crushing of the Anarchists in 1921. An example is the experience of the Anarchist G. P. Maximov, an activist in the factory committees and the editor of Golos Trouda (the Voice of Labour), which we quoted at the start of this section. Golos Trouda was suppressed in mid-1918, as was its successor, Vol’nyi Golos Trouda (Free Voice of Labour), a few months later, Maximov was detained 6 times between 1919 and 1921. In 1922, following a hunger strike and pressure by the international Anarchist movement, he and several other prominent Anarchists were deported. Others were not as lucky.
The Communist Party’s claim that it was only suppressing Anarchists involved in crime and terrorism was false, because almost the entire movement was innocent of such acts. The Communist claim that the Anarchists were working with the opponents of the Revolution was another lie, as most gave various degrees of support to the regime following the start of the Civil War, despite their criticisms of the Bolsheviks. (Russia was invaded by 17 reactionary armies in 1918, the so-called “White Guards”, backed by imperialism, who sought to smash the Revolution through military intervention). Similar repression hit other left-wing groups. Workers who stood up against the terror and repression met a similar fate to the rest of the left. A key instrument of the repression was the State secret police, the “Cheka” (the Extraordinary Committee to Fight Counter-Revolution). The December 8 1917 founding decree of the Cheka stated that its role was to “watch the press, saboteurs, strikers, and the Socialist-Revolutionaries of the Right” [14]. Strikers were thus labelled reactionaries who could be subjected to rapidly increasing repression, starting with “confiscation, confinement, deprivation of (food) cards” and ending with summary execution.
As the head of the Cheka stated [15]:
“We stand for organised terror - this should be openly stated - terror being absolutely indispensable in current revolutionary conditions... we terrorise the enemies of the Soviet government in order to stifle crime at its inception. Terror serves as a ready deterrent.”
By 1921, the Cheka had 260,000 members, making it nearly 20 times bigger than the secret police of the Tsarist capitalist government, the Okhrana, which had 15,000 members! In the 5 brief years of its existence (1917-22 - when it was replaced by the GPU, later renamed the KGB), the Cheka was responsible for at least 140,000 executions, not including another 140,000 carried out in the course of military operations. Compare this to only 14,000 executions over 50 years by the Okhrana, itself the tool of a brutal Tsarist dictatorship and you get some idea of the extent of Communist repression! It is important to note that large numbers of the victims were political dissidents, striking workers and resistant peasants.
Remembering revolutionary Kronstadt 1921
An example of these practices is provided by the fate of the “Kronstadt Revolt” of 1921. In February 1921, a spontaneous general strike against poor conditions broke out in Petrograd (later Leningrad), a strike that was met with repression and the execution by the Cheka of the strike leaders. Hearing of these events, the sailors and workers at the nearby Kronstadt naval base issued a manifesto (the “Petropavlosk Resolution”) calling for the release of left-wing and Anarchist political prisoners, free speech, free trade union activity, the right of peasants to use the land as they saw fit (short of using hired labour), new elections to the workers councils and the removal of the special privileges of the Communist Party. For this they were brutally repressed by the (State-controlled) Red Army under Bolshevik leader Trotsky, and the Cheka.
The Bolsheviks slandered the Kronstadt revolt as “counter-revolutionary” even though it raised essentially the original demands of the revolution four years earlier: “all power to the soviets (workers councils)” and “land, peace and freedom”. (There is, of course, no evidence that the revolt was directed by outside forces). But the thinking behind the suppression of the Kronstadt revolt was clear enough. At the 10th Congress of the Communist Party, which was meeting at the same time as the revolt occurred, Trotsky slammed those who criticised the Party’s suppression of free political activity, stating that [16]:
“They have come out with dangerous slogans. They have made a fetish of democratic principles. They have placed the workers right to elect representatives above the Party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers democracy!”
It was on this basis - the theory of the “vanguard party” which must impose socialism on the ignorant masses - that the Bolsheviks murdered the revolutionaries who had been in the forefront of the struggle against the Tsar and the Provisional Government.
In 1917, Trotsky had praised the sailors of Kronstadt as the “pride and glory of the Russian Revolution”. But in 1921, when those same militants challenged the dictatorship he had been instrumental in creating, he had them shot down, claiming that the original Kronstadt garrison had been replaced by “coarse peasant lads” controlled by reactionary forces. However, Trotsky was lying when he claimed that the composition of Kronstadt had changed: at least 91% of the crews of the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol ships, who spearheaded the revolt, and 75% of the Baltic fleet as a whole, had been recruited before October 1917 [17]. The real threat of Kronstadt was political: it was a challenge by revolutionary workers and sailors to a one-party, State-capitalist system built on blood.
By 1921, the process of destroying political freedom was completed. Kronstadt was brutally suppressed with up to 20,000 workers and sailors killed. At the same time, mass arrests of Anarchists took place throughout the country and the movement’s remaining presses and bookstores were closed down. Following pressure by the international Anarchist movement, a number of prominent Anarchists were later deported from the country; others had been murdered in the prisons of the Cheka. Earlier that year, Lenin banned works by the French Anarchist Ferdinand Pelloutier and some of the works of Bakunin and Kropotkin (like Bakunin, Kropotkin was a key founder of Anarchism). The 10th Communist Party Congress of the same year also abandoned all pretence of internal party democracy, banning all internal factions in the Party. The country had moved from a liberating revolution by workers and peasants to a one-party state under the Marxists.
Did the economy make them do it?
Marxists like to excuse the economic and political repression practised by the Communist Party (if they actually admit it happened) as an emergency measure introduced in conditions of war and poverty. They claim that things went wrong in Russia because of external forces, not because of the politics of the Communist Party.
Obviously, the conditions of the Civil War, the poverty of the country, and the failure of the revolution to spread successfully into the more developed countries of Europe all placed huge obstacles in the path of building socialism in Russia.
But these factors cannot take all the blame for the establishment of a Communist Party dictatorship and state-capitalism. We have to also look at the role of the politics of the Communist Party; we have to look at factors besides the economy. The smashing of workers self-management in the factories, and the repression of the Anarchists started before the Civil War began in Russia with the revolt of the Czechoslovak Corps in May 1918. Similarly, the Kronstadt revolt, the banning of factions and the final suppression and deportation of the Anarchists took place after the war had for all practical purposes ended: the so-called “White” armies had been defeated in all of the Soviet Union except for a few small pockets of resistance in the country’s Far East by November 1920.
Of course, any worker-peasant revolution needs physical self-defence, a co-ordinated economy and international support. Nonetheless, putting reactionary generals in power in the army, putting the capitalists and bureaucrats in charge of the factories, subordinating workers and peasants to a one-party State, maintaining wage-labour and setting up death squads to murder strikers and Anarchists and other socialists is not a recipe for creating a free society. It is a recipe for dictatorship and capitalism. A genuinely socialist and free society can only be created by the working class and working peasants acting on their own initiative to smash the chains of oppression.
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN THE UKRAINE [18]
Anarchist influence here (the South of Russia) was dominant right up to 1921. An insurgent peasant army led by the Anarchist Nestor Makhno played a central role in defeating the local counter-revolutionary forces and the numerous armies of foreign intervention. This army was internally democratic, with all officers elected by the soldiers and subject to the control of the Regional Congresses of Workers, Peasants and Insurgents initiated by the Anarchists. This movement - called the “Makhnovischna” - at first worked closely with the Communists in the Civil War. The Red Army led by Trotsky signed a treaty of co-operation and Lenin talked of giving the Ukraine over as an experiment in building an Anarchist society.
At first, the Makhnovists were hailed as heroes of the revolution by the Communist press. They played a key role in defeating the counter-revolutionary armies of Wrangel and Deniken. However as soon as the threat of invasion had been overcome the Communist leaders tore up the treaties and slandered the Makhnovists with disgraceful and unfounded lies. They declared war on the Anarchists as if they were an army of reaction. After a brutal war, in which nearly 90% of the Makhnovist troops were killed, the Red Army succeeded in breaking the back of the Makhnovist movement.
The achievements of the Makhnovists were not only military. As their army moved through the Ukraine they encouraged and helped the setting up of free collectives among the working peasantry and farm labourers. Often this had to take second place to the need to fight and defeat the varied foreign armies of occupation. What was important was that it was proved, even in the conditions of war and invasion, that production could be organised to benefit all rather than to line the pockets of a few. In the areas controlled by the movement, there was full freedom of speech and assembly, showing that even in conditions of civil war, it is possible and indeed essential for the workers and working peasants to enjoy political freedom during a revolution. It also shows that a democratic workers militia can function quite effectively in conditions of Civil War, although obviously the numerical superiority of the Red Army won in the end. Repression cannot create freedom; only freedom can create order.
Lessons
The Russian experience also shows that the fake socialists and their parties cannot be trusted. If a genuine democratic (and stateless) socialism is to triumph, power must stay with those who produce society’s wealth. No party, no matter how well intentioned, can deliver socialism on a plate. Repression cannot create freedom; it can only create more repression. We workers and peasants must take power and build the new order ourselves. It also shows the need for a united and effective Anarchist movement. Divisions and confusion undermined the Russian Anarchists.
Spain is one of the Western countries where the Anarchist influence predominated in our class. Introduced in the 18 hundreds, it rapidly spread throughout the country. This led to the formation of the Anarchist Union CNT (National Confederation of Labour) in 1911. In the years up to the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the CNT had over two million members. It was the major union in the most industrialised areas, especially the province of Catalonia and its capital Barcelona. It also had a large base amongst day labourers and small peasants in most provinces.
The CNT was a revolutionary union of workers (usually described as Syndicalist or Anarcho-Syndicalist). Its role was two-fold. Firstly to fight to improve conditions for workers and secondly to organise for the overthrow of capitalism. Its beliefs were translated into action at every opportunity and this militant tradition attracted workers in their hundreds of thousands.
The CNT organised itself from the place of work. Each workplace joined in a federation with other workplaces in their region to form a regional committee. These regional committees were then federated on a national basis and formed a national committee. Within each particular industry there was also a regional and national federation.
Assemblies of workers were the core of the CNT. These made the decisions and elected delegates to regional and national level. All delegates could be recalled and replaced by the assembly if the members were not satisfied with their conduct. Thus no decisions could be made without consulting the rank-and-file membership. There were no full-time union bureaucrats beyond the control of the workers.
The number of full-time officials was minimal. They were elected for specified periods after which they had to stand down and return to their previous job. At all times they were subject to control by the rank-and-file. The experience and organisation of the CNT shows that contrary to popular belief Anarchists are not anti-organisation. In reality Anarchism is highly organised and allows for the participation of all. Nor are we always against centralisation. What is important is that those at the centre are recallable and directly responsible to those they are elected to represent.
By the time of the revolution, the CNT had grown to about two million members. But the Anarchists did not restrict their role to the workplace and the CNT. They also organised an Anarchist political organisation, the FAI, to defend and spread Anarchist ideas in the unions; organised rent boycotts in poor areas; and set up youth and women’s organisations. The CNT itself included working peasants, farm workers and the unemployed. It even set up free workers schools!
The Revolution Begins
The Revolution started with an attempted Fascist coup following the victory of the Popular Front (an alliance of liberal, republic, socialist, and Marxist parties) in the 1936 elections. Fascists are extreme right wing supporters of dictatorship, and are backed by the ruling class to suppress the struggles of the workers and the poor for a better life.
Although the fascists managed to maintain control of parts of Spain, they were defeated in many areas, as the workers and working peasants mobilised to defeat the coup attempt. A Civil War broke out between the forces in the fascist-controlled areas and the areas controlled by the workers and working peasants (sometimes called the “Republican” zone).
The Anarchists believed that the Civil War was not just a fight against fascism but also against the capitalist/State system that had spawned fascism in the first place. Anarchist influence was everywhere amongst the masses, in the formation of a workers militia by the unions, in the seizure of factories by workers, in land seizures and collectivisations by farm labourers and working peasants.
This marked the beginning of the revolution for the Anarchists. Thus they set about seizing factories and capitalist farms and turning them over to workers self-management. In the zones dominated by Anarchist influence workers self-management became a reality. In Catalonia there were at least 2,000 industrial and commercial collectives. At least 60% of “Republican” Spain’s agriculture (that part controlled by anti-fascist forces including the Anarchists) was collectivised.
In the workplaces councils or “comite” elected by assemblies of workers and representing all sectors of the enterprise, were given the task of administering the collectivised factory. Collectivised enterprises in each sector of industry were represented in an Economic Federation. This in turn was topped by a General Industrial Council that would closely control the whole industry.
Here is a description of the organisation of gas, electricity and water in Barcelona [20].
“Each type of job (e.g. fitters) set up a section consisting of at least fifteen workers. Where they were not the numbers to do this, workers from different trades got together to constitute a general section. Each section nominates two delegates, which are chosen by assemblies of the workers. One of the delegates will be of a technical calibre and will participate in the “comite” of the workplace. The other will be entrusted with the management of work in the section.
The “comite” of the building or plant comes next. It is nominated by the delegates of the sections and consists of a technician, a manual worker and an administrator. The manual worker has to solve difficulties that might arise between different sections. He or she receives suggestions from workers in the different trades and the sections give him or her daily reports on the progress of work. Periodically the delegate calls the sections to general meetings. At these, proposals and initiatives that are likely to improve production and productivity are studied as well as ones to improve the workers’ situation. A copy of the deliberation is sent to the Council for Industry.
The delegate with administrative functions supervises the arrival and warehousing of materials, records requirement details with book-keeping for supplies and reserves, and keeps an eye on the state of income and expenditure. S/He also deals with correspondence and it is his/her responsibility to see that balance sheets and reports addressed to the Council for Industry are prepared.
The delegate with technical functions supervises the activities of her/his section, and uses every endeavour to increase productivity and to lighten the workers’ burden by introducing new methods. S/He checks on production at the power stations, the state of the network, prepares statistics and charts indicating how production is developing. At the summit there are the Councils of Industry. One each for gas, electricity and water. Each is composed of eight delegates, four from the UGT, (the reformist socialist trade union) and four from the CNT. These are capped by the General Council of the three industries, which is also made up by eight delegates drawn equally from the two unions.
This Council co-ordinates activities of the three industries; attunes the production and distribution of raw materials from a regional, national and international point of view; modifies prices; organises general administration; indeed takes and uses all initiatives useful to production and the workers’ needs. Meanwhile it is obliged at all times to submit its’ activities to the scrutiny of local and regional union assemblies”
On The Trams
The achievements of collectivisation in Barcelona were many. Take for example the tramways. Out of the 7,000 workers, 6,500 were members of the CNT. Because of the street battles all transport had been brought to a halt. The transport syndicate (as unions of the CNT were known) appointed a commission of seven to occupy the administrative offices while others inspected the tracks and drew up a plan of repair work that needed to be done. Five days after the fighting stopped 700 tramcars, instead of the usual 600, all painted in the black and red colours of the CNT, were operating on the streets of Barcelona.
With the profit motive gone (the trams had belonged to a Belgian company before the workers took over), safety became more important and the number of accidents was reduced. Fares were lowered and services improved. In 1936, 183,543,516 passengers were carried. In 1937 this had gone up by 50 million. The trams were running so efficiently that the workers were able to give money to other sections of urban transport. Wages were equalised for all workers and increased over the previous rates. For the first time free medical care was provided for the workforce.
As well as giving a more efficient service, the workers found time to produce rockets and howitzers for the war effort. They worked overtime and Sundays to do their share for the anti-fascist struggle. To further underline the fact that getting rid of the bosses and rulers would not lead to a breakdown of order it can be pointed out that in the three years of collectivisation there were only six cases of workers stealing from the workshops.
On The Land
The countryside also saw collectivisation. For example, in Aragon, a province that was near the war front-line, collectivisation took root and spread like wildfire. In February 1937 there were 275 collectives totalling 80,000 members. Three months later there were 450 collectives with 180,000 members. Often the working peasants and farm labourers went further than their counterparts in the towns and cities. Not only was production collectivised; in rural areas consumption was too. In many of these areas money was abolished.
Large estates were taken over by landless labourers; small peasants put their land together so that it could be worked more efficiently by the use of machinery. Collectives were based around the villages and federated on a regional basis.
Usually the decision to collectivise was made at an assembly (a meeting of all the village). It meant handing over land, livestock, tools, seed, stocks of wheat and other produce. The land was then divided into sectors, each of which was assigned to a work group of about a dozen who elected their own delegate. Produce went into the “pile” for communal consumption. Each would produce according to their ability, each would consume according to their needs. People who did not want to join the collectives were not forced to. They were given enough land to farm on, but were forbidden to hire workers (because this would reintroduce a form of capitalism). Most of these “individualists” eventually joined the collectives when they saw how successful they were.
Collectivisation did not only apply to the land. In the villages, workshops were set up where all the local trades people would produce tools, furniture, etc. for the village and also carry out repairs to the collectivists houses. Bakers, butchers, barbers and so on were also collectivised.
The conditions of rural workers and working peasants was improved by the introduction of machinery. Living standards rose, in the words of one collectivist “those who had less now ate more and better - no one went short”. Education became a central concern and young children who had never been to school were given the education denied to them by the landlords and their system.
The Workers Militia
In the early stages of the revolution, the armed forces of the State had effectively collapsed. In their place, the trade unions and left-wing forces, especially the Anarchists and the CNT, set about organising the armed workers and peasants into democratic workers militias. Overall, there were 150,000 volunteers willing to fight where they were needed. The majority were members of the CNT. All officers were elected by the rank-and-file and had no special privileges.
Womens’ Action
Gains were also made by women. In relation to their role during the Civil War, observers have pointed out that they played a full part in the anti-fascist resistance. They were present everywhere - on committees, in the militias, in the front line. In the early battles of the war women fought alongside men as a matter of course. It was not merely a case of women filling in for men who were away at the front. (Which is usually the case in wartime. When the war is over and women are no longer needed in the labour force, they are pushed back into the home).
They were in the militias and fought alongside the men as equals. They were organising the collectives and taking up the fight against the sexist attitudes of the past which have no place in any real revolution.
The Anarchist women’s organisation, Mujeres Libres (Free Women), had 30,000 members. It had been active before the Civil War organising women workers and distributing information on contraception. Mujeres Libres was a specifically working class women’s organisation, committed to class struggle and worker-peasant revolution. It was allied to the Anarchist youth, community, union and political organisations. During the war, abortion was legalised in the “Republican zone”. Centres were opened for women, including unmarried mothers and prostitutes.
From all accounts there truly were changes in attitudes towards women. One woman participant in the Civil War has said [21]:
“It was like being brothers and sisters. It had always annoyed me that men in this country didn’t consider women as beings with full human rights. But now there was this big change. I believe it arose spontaneously out of the revolutionary movement.”
This sort of thing is common to most revolutionary situations. When people begin to throw off the old ideas and start creating a new society their views on many things change. This is not inevitable though and does not remove the need for propaganda and activity against sexism, not only in society as a whole but also within the revolutionary movement itself.
The Revolution Defeated
But despite all these achievements, the revolution was defeated in 1939 when the Fascists won the war and crushed the working class and working peasantry with a brutal dictatorship.
Why did this happen? In part, this outcome reflected the strengths of the fascists who had military and other support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
The Anarchists also made mistakes. In our opinion they hesitated in carrying out their programme - instead of organising the working class to take full power, of making a direct appeal to the workers to take control of economic and social affairs, they aimed for maximum anti-fascist unity, going so far as to collaborate with the Popular Front and ended up joining the government.
This required the CNT to make many otherwise unnecessary compromises on its revolutionary programme, with disastrous results. The pace of change was halted. The Popular Front government got a chance to undermine the collectives and militia (in order to defend capitalism and the State). The result was massive demoralisation by the workers - definitely one of the reasons why the war was lost. The State preferred the risk of a fascist victory to that of workers power. It had no faith in the ability of workers to run society.
The Communist Party of Spain played a leading role in the Popular Front government assault on the revolution. They also preferred defeat by the fascists than the victory of Anarchism. The Communists were tied to the needs of the Russian dictator Stalin (Stalin was the successor of Lenin). Stalin’s foreign policy centred on not upsetting the Western powers. To the Communists, the restoration of the capitalist order was preferable to seeing the working class take power. And that should come as no surprise as the Marxist system in Russia was no more than another form of capitalism.
We think the CNT should have stuck to its original programme, which offered a clear way to win the revolution. Rather than ally with the Popular Front, it should have organised revolution against the bosses, the State and their fascist friends, alliances only with working class and working peasant organisations, defence by a democratic worker/peasant militia, and the immediate decolonisation of the Spanish colonies.
Lessons
But in any case, the main point is that given the right conditions mutual aid and co-operation will flourish. It shows that the workers, peasants and the poor can create a new world without bosses or a government. It showed that Anarchist ideas and methods (such as revolutionary trade unionism) can work. And it showed that imperialism is the enemy of all workers: the fascists used the Spanish colonial army from North Africa to launch their attack and slaughter Spanish workers and peasants.
BREAD, AND ROSES TOO
History is not neutral. What we learn in school is the necessity for government, rulers and capitalism. What we do not learn is that many times it has been shown that this government is not necessary. People are not inherently bad. Given the right conditions a spirit of mutual aid and co-operation can grow. People are not naturally evil and greedy.
How we act is related to the structure of society and the dominant value system within it. When structures are changed, and oppression and exploitation is done away with, the “goodness” that is in most of us come through and flourishes as it did when the workers held the reigns in Russia and Spain. The experience of self-management is not limited to these countries but is something that has been seen in most countries at some stage.
JOIN US!
What Anarchists are saying are not just “nice” ideas. History shows us that these ideas can work. A new society can be created with the workers and poor in control. But it won’t happen spontaneously - We must organise for it.
That is why we need revolutionary organisation. An organisation that draws together all those fighting for workers control. An organisation that gives us the chance to exchange ideas and experiences, and to learn from the lessons of history. An organisation that allows us to struggle together for a new society. An organisation that will work in the unions to fight the bureaucratic leaders, win the rank-and-file to Anarchist ideas, and transform these workers organisations into revolutionary combat units.
We do not need a group of leaders and their passive followers. We do not need a so-called “vanguard party” dictating from on high. What we need is an organisation working towards mobilising the mass of ordinary people in the process of making the revolution.
Anarchism suffered severe blows from the rise of fascism and communism in the 1920s and 1930s, but the collapse of the fake socialism of the Marxists and the Labour Parties, and the crisis of capitalism across the world, Anarchism is again re-emerging as a powerful current amongst the masses.
First published by the Workers Solidarity Federation
Second revised edition, 1997 printing. Johannesburg. South Africa.
This edition by Zabalaza Books and Bikisha Media Collective, 2003.
Inspired by the Workers Solidarity Movement pamphlet, Anarchism and Ireland.
Available from (post): WSM, PO Box 1526, Dublin 8, Ireland or
(internet): www.struggle.ws/wsm
REFERENCES
[8] For overviews of Bakunin’s ideas, see Anarchist Federation (Britain and Ireland), Basic Bakunin, and R. B. Saltman, The Social and Political Thought of Michael Bakunin. Many of Bakunin’s writings are collected in Sam Dolgoff (ed.), Bakunin on Anarchism.
[9] Unless otherwise stated, all figures cited in this section are from the articles in H. Shukman (editor), The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of the Russian Revolution. See pp. 29, 166, 175, 177, 182, 184, 187.
[10] M. Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers Control, page 61, 13.
[11] Quoted in Thorpe, 1989, ‘The Workers Themselves’: Revolutionary Syndicalism and International Labour, p. 166.
[12] Lenin, (1918), "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government", quoted in D. Cohn-Bendit, Obsolete Communism: the Left-Wing Alternative, p. 226.
[13] P. Avrich, The Russian Anarchists.
[14] cited in R. V. Daniels (ed.), 1985, A Documentary History of Communism, vol. 1, p. 90. - emphasis added.
[15] quoted in H. Shukman (ed.), The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of the Russian Revolution. p. 182.
[16] L. Trotsky, Sochineya, Moscow 1925, p. 89, 236. Also cited in Nove, Studies in Economics and Russia, 1990, 181 et seq.
[17] I. Geltzer, Kronstadt 1917-21: the Fate of a Soviet Democracy. p. 207.
[18 ]see P. Archinov, History of the Makhnovist Movement, Voline, The Unknown Revolution, and M. Malet, Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War. Also see Nestor Makhno, The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays.
[19] On the Spanish Revolution, see among others, B. Bolloten, The Spanish Revolution, J. Peirats, The Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, G. Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, Solidarity Federation, Spanish Revolution: Anarchism in Action, M. Ackelsberg, Free Women of Spain.
[20] This account is taken from Collectives in the Spanish Revolution by G. Leval.
[21]
Margorita Balaguer quoted in Blood of Spain, edited by Ronald
Fraser. p. 287.
