In this appendix of our FAQ we discuss and reply to various analyses of Spanish anarchism put forward by Marxists, particularly Marxist-Leninists of various shades. The history and politics of Spanish Anarchism is not well known in many circles, particularly Marxist ones, and the various misrepresentations and distortions that Marxists have spread about that history and politics are many. This appendix is an attempt to put the record straight with regards the Spanish Anarchist movement and point out the errors associated with the standard Marxist accounts of that movement, its politics and its history.
Hopefully this appendix will go some way towards making Marxists (and others) investigate the actual facts of anarchism and Spanish anarchist history rather than depending on inaccurate secondary material (usually written by their comrades). As such, it is a supplement to section I.8 and provides some background information on the Social Revolution of 1936.
Part of this essay is based on the article "Trotskyist Lies on Anarchism" which appeared in Black Flag issue no. 211 and Tom Wetzel's article Workers' Power and the Spanish Revolution.
The thesis that the Spanish Anarchists were "primitive rebels," with a primitive understanding of the nature of revolution is a common one amongst Marxists. One of the main sources for this kind of argument is Eric Hobsbawm's Primitive Rebels, who was a member of the British Communist Party at the time. While the obvious Stalinist nature of the author may be thought enough to alert the intelligent of its political biases, its basic thesis is repeated by many Marxists.
Before discussing Hobsbawm in more detail, it would be useful to refute some of the more silly things so-called serious historians have asserted about Spanish Anarchism. Indeed, it would be hard to find another social or political movement which has been more misrepresented or its ideas and activities so distorted by historians whose attitudes seem more supported by ideological conviction rather than history or investigation of social life.
One of the most common descriptions of Spanish anarchism is that it was "religious" or "millenarium" in nature. Hobsbawm himself accepts this conceptualisation, along with historians and commentators like Gerald Brenan and Franz Brokenau (who, in fact, did state "Anarchism is a religious movement"). Such use of religion was largely due to the influence of Juan Diaz del Moral, a lawyer and historian who was also a landowner. As Jerome R. Mintz points out, "according to Diaz del Moral, the moral and passionate obreros conscientes [conscious workers -- i.e. workers who considered themselves to be anarchists] absorbed in their pamphlets and newspapers were akin to frenzied believers in a new religion." [The Anarchists of Casas Viejas, p. 5f] However, such a perspective was formed by his class position and privileges which could not help but reflect them:
"Diaz del Moral ascribed to the campesinos [of Andalusia] racial and cultural stereotypes that were common saws of his class. The sole cause for the waves of rural unrest, Diaz del Moral asserted, could be found in the psychology of the campesinos . . . He believed that the Andalusian field workers had inherited a Moorish tendency toward ecstasy and millenarianism that accounted for their attraction to anarchist teaching. Diaz del Moral was mystified by expressions of animosity directed toward him, but the workers considered him to be a senorito, a landowner who does not labour . . . Although he was both scholarly and sympathetic, Diaz del Moral could not comprehend the hunger and the desperation of the campesinos around him . . . To Diaz del Moral, campesino ignorance, passion, ecstasy, illusion, and depression, not having a legitimate basis in reality, could be found only in the roots of their racial heritage." [Op. Cit., pp. 5-6]
Hence the "religious" nature of anarchism -- it was one of the ways an uncomprehending member of the middle-class could explain working class discontent and rebellion. Unfortunately, this "explanation" has become common place in history books (partly reflected academics class interest too and lack of understanding of working class interests, needs and hopes).
As Mintz argues, "at first glance the religious model seems to make anarchism easier to understand, particularly in the absence of detailed observation and intimate contact. The model was, however, also used to serve the political ends of anarchism's opponents. Here the use of the terms 'religious' and 'millenarium' stamp anarchist goals as unrealistic and unattainable. Anarchism is thus dismissed as a viable solution to social ills." He continues by arguing that the "oversimplifications posited became serious distortions of anarchist belief and practice" (as we shall see). [Op. Cit., p. 5 and p. 6]
Temma Kaplan's critique of the "religious" view is also worth mentioning. She argues that "the millenarium theory is too mechanistic to explain the complex pattern of Andalusian anarchist activity. The millenarian argument, in portraying the Andalusian anarchists as fundamentally religious, overlooks their clear comprehension of the social sources of their oppression." She concludes that "the degree of organisation, not the religiosity of workers and the community, accounts for mass mobilisations carried on by the Andalusian anarchists at the end of the nineteenth century." She also notes that the "[i]n a secular age, the taint of religion is the taint of irrationality." [Anarchists of Andalusia: 1868-1903, pp. 210-12 and p. 211] Thus, the Andalusian anarchists had a clear idea who their enemies were, namely the ruling class of the region. She also points out that, for all their revolutionary elan, the anarchists developed a rational strategy of revolution, channelling their energies into organising a trade union movement that could be used as a vehicle for social and economic change. Moreover, as well as a clear idea of how to change society they had a clear vision of what sort of society they desired -- one built around collective ownership and federations of workers' associations and communes.
Therefore the idea that anarchism can be explained in "religious" terms is fundamentally flawed. It basically assumes that the Spanish workers were fundamentally irrational, unable to comprehend the sources of their unhappiness nor able to define their own political goals and tactics and instead looked to naive theories which reinforced their irrationalities. In actuality, like most people, they were sensible, intelligent human beings who believed in a better life and were willing to apply their ideas in their everyday life. That historians apply patronising attitudes towards them says more about the historians than the campesinos.
This uncomprehending attitude to historians can be seen from some of the more strange assertions they make against the Spanish Anarchists. Gerald Brenan, Eric Hobsbawm and Raymond Carr, for example, all maintained that there was a connection between anarchist strikes and sexual practices. Carr's description gives a flavour:
"Austere puritans, they sought to impose vegetarianism, sexual abstinence, and atheism on one of the most backward peasantries of Europe . . . Thus strikes were moments of exaltation as well as demands for better conditions; spontaneous and often disconnected they would bring, not only the abolition of piece-work, but 'the day,' so near at hand that sexual intercourse and alcohol were abandoned by enthusiasts till it should dawn." [Spain: 1808-1975, p. 444]
Mintz, an American anthropologist who actually stayed with the campesino's for a number of years after 1965, actually asked them about such claims. As he put it, the "level-headed anarchists were astonished by such descriptions of supposed Spanish puritanism by over-enthusiastic historians." [Op. Cit., p. 6] As one anarchist put it, "[o]f course, without any work the husband couldn't provide any food at dinnertime, and so they were angry at each other, and she wouldn't have anything to do with him. In that sense, yes, there were no sexual relations." [quoted, Op. Cit., p. 7]
Mintz traces the citations which allowed the historians to arrive at such ridiculous views to a French social historian, Angel Maraud, who observed that during the general strike of 1902 in Moron, marriages were postponed to after the promised division of the lands. As Mintz points out, "as a Frenchman, Maraud undoubtedly assumed that everyone knew a formal wedding ceremony did not necessarily govern the sexual relations of courting couples." [Op. Cit., p. 6f]
As for abstinence and puritanism, nothing could be further from the truth. As Mintz argues, the anarchists considered alcoholism as being "responsible for much of the social malaise among many workers . . . Excessive drinking robbed the worker of his senses and deprived his family of food. Anarchist newspapers and pamphlets hammered out the evil of this vice." However, "[p]roscriptions were not of a puritanical order" (and so there was no desire to "impose" such things on people) and quotes an anarchist who stated that "coffee and tobacco were not prohibited, but one was advised against using them. Men were warned against going to a brothel. It was not a matter of morality but of hygiene." As for vegetarianism, it "attracted few adherents, even among the obreros conscientes." [Op. Cit., pp. 86-7 and p. 88]
Moreover, academic mockery of anarchist attempts to combat alcoholism (and not alcohol as such) forgets the social context. Being academics they may not have experienced wage labour directly and so do not realise the misery it can cause. People turn to drink simply because their jobs are so bad and seek escape from the drudgery of their everyday lives. As Bakunin argued, "confined in their life like a prisoner in his prison, without horizon, without outlet . . . the people would have the singularly narrow souls and blunted instincts of the bourgeois if they did not feel a desire to escape; but of escape there are but three methods -- two chimerical and a third real. The first two are the dram-shop and the church, debauchery of the body or debauchery of the mind; the third is social revolution." [God and the State, p. 16] So to combat alcoholism was particularly important as many workers turned to alcohol as a means of escaping the misery of life under capitalism. Thus Bookchin:
"[T]o abstain from smoking, to live by high moral standards, and to especially adjure the consumption of alcohol was very important at the time. Spain was going through her own belated industrial revolution during the period of anarchist ascendancy with all its demoralising features. The collapse of morale among the proletariat, with rampant drunkenness, venereal disease, and the collapse of sanitary facilities, was the foremost problem which Spanish revolutionaries had to deal with . . . On this score, the Spanish anarchists were eminently successful. Few CNT workers, much less a committed anarchist, would have dared show up drunk at meetings or misbehave overtly with their comrades. If one considers the terrible working and living conditions of the period, alcoholism was not as serious a problem in Spain as it was in England during the industrial revolution." ["Introductory Essay", The Anarchist Collectives, Sam Dolgoff (ed.), pp. xix-xxf]
Mintz sums up by stating "[c]ontrary to exaggerated accounts of anarchist zeal, most thoughtful obreros conscientes believed in moderation, not abstinence." [Op. Cit., p. 88] Unfortunately Mintz's work, the product of years of living with and talking to the people actually involved in the movement, does not seem to have made much impact on the historians. Unsurprising, really, as history is rarely about the actions, ideas and hopes of working people.
As can be seen, historians seem to delight in misrepresenting the ideas and actions of the Spanish Anarchists. Sometimes, as just seen, the distortions are quite serious, extremely misleading and ensure that anarchism cannot be understood or viewed as a serious political theory (we can understand why Marxists historians would seek this). Sometimes they can be subtle as when Ronald Fraser states that at the CNT's Saragossa congress in 1936 "the proposal to create a libertarian militia to crush a military uprising was rejected almost scornfully, in the name of traditional anti-militarism." [Blood of Spain, p. 101] Hugh Thomas makes the same claim, stating at "there was no sign that anyone [at the congress] realised that there was a danger of fascism; and no agreement, in consequence, on the arming of militias, much less the organisation of a revolutionary army as suggested by Juan Garcia Oliver." [The Spanish Civil War, p. 181]
However, what Fraser and Thomas omit to tell the reader is that this motion "was defeated by one favouring the idea of guerrilla warfare." [Peter Marshal, Demanding the Impossible, p. 460] The Saragossa resolution itself stated that a "permanent army constitutes the greatest danger for the revolution . . . The armed people will be the best guarantee against all attempts to restore the destroyed regime by interior or exterior forces . . . Each Commune should have its arms and elements of defence." [quoted by Robert Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, vol. 1, p. 64]
Fraser's and Hugh's omission is extremely serious -- it gives a radically false impression of anarchist politics. Their comments could led a reader to think that anarchists, as Marxists claim, do not believe in defending a revolution. As can be seen from the actual resolutions of the Saragossa conference, this is not the case. Indeed, given that the congress was explicitly discussing, along with many other issues, the question of "defence of the revolution" their omission seriously distorts the CNT's position and anarchist theory. As seen, the congress supported the need to arm the people and to keep those arms under the control of the communes (as well as the role of "Confederal Defence Forces" and the efficient organisation of forces on a national level). Given that Thomas quotes extensively from the Saragossa resolution on libertarian communism we can only surmise that he forgot to read the section entitled "Defence of the Revolution."
Hugh and Thomas omissions, however, ensure that anarchism is presented as an utopian and naive theory, unaware of the problems facing society. In reality, the opposite is the case -- the Spanish anarchists were well aware of the need to arm the people and resist counter-revolution and fascism by force. Regardless of Thomas' claims, it is clear that the CNT and FAI realised the danger of fascism existed and passed appropriate resolutions outlining how to organise an effective means of self-defence (indeed, as early as February 14 of that year, the CNT had issued a prophetic manifesto warning that right-wing elements were ready to provoke a military coup [Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, p. 273]). To state otherwise, while quoting from the document that discusses the issue, must be considered a deliberate lie.
However, to return to our main point -- Eric Hobsbawm's thesis that the Spanish anarchists were an example of "pre-political" groups -- the "primitive rebels" of his title.
Essentially, Hobsbawm describes the Spanish Anarchists -- particularly the Andalusian anarchists -- as modern-day secular mystics who, like the millenarians of the Middle Ages, were guided by the irrational belief that it was possible to will profound social change. The actions of the Spanish anarchist movement, therefore, can be explained in terms of millenarian behaviour -- the belief that it was able to jump start to utopia via an act of will.
The Spanish farm and industrial workers, it is argued, were unable to grasp the complexities of the economic and political structures that dominated their lives and so were attracted to anarchism. According to Hobsbawm, anarchism is marked by "theoretical primitivism" and a primitive understanding of revolution and this explained why anarchism was popular with Spanish workers, particularly farm workers. According to Hobsbawm, anarchism told the workers that by spontaneously rising up together they could overthrow the forces of repression and create the new millennium.
Obviously, we cannot refute Hobsbawm's claims of anarchism's "theoretical primitivism" in this appendix, the reader is invited to consult the main FAQ. Moreover, we cannot stress more that Hobsbawm's assertion that anarchists believe in spontaneous, overnight uprisings is false. Rather, we see revolution as a process in which day-to-day struggle and organisation play a key role -- it is not seen as occurring independently of the on-going class struggle or social evolution. While we discuss in depth the nature of an anarchist social revolution in section J.7, we can present a few quotes by Bakunin to refute Hobsbawm's claim:
"Revolutions are not improvised. They are not made at will by individuals. They come about through the force of circumstances and are independent of any deliberate ill or conspiracy." [quoted by Brian Morris, Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom, p. 139]
"It is impossible to rouse people by artificial means. Popular revolutions are born by the actual force of events . . . It is impossible to bring about such a revolution artificially. It is not even possible to speed it up at all significantly . . . There are some periods in history when revolutions are quite simply impossible; there are other periods when they are inevitable." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 183]
As Brian Morris correctly argues, "Bakunin denies that a social revolution could be made by the will of individuals, independent of social and economic circumstances. He was much less a voluntarist than his Marxist critics make out . . . he was . . . aware that the social revolution would be a long process that may take many years for its realisation." [Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom, pp. 138-9] To aid the process of social revolution, Bakunin supported the need for "pioneering groups or associations of advanced workers who were willing to initiate this great movement of self-emancipation." However, more is needed -- namely popular working class organisations -- "what is the organisation of the masses? . . . It is the organisation by professions and trades . . . The organisation of the trade sections . . . bear in themselves the living seed of the new society which is to replace the old world. They are creating not only the ideas but also the facts of the future itself." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 252 and p. 255]
Therefore, Bakunin saw revolution as a process which starts with day-to-day struggle and creation of labour unions to organise that struggle. As he put it himself:
"What policy should the International [Workers' Association] follow during th[e] somewhat extended time period that separates us from this terrible social revolution . . . the International will give labour unrest in all countries an essentially economic character, with the aim of reducing working hours and increasing salary, by means of the association of the working masses . . . It will [also] propagandise its principles . . . Lastly, the International will expand and organise across frontiers of all countries, so that when the revolution -- brought about by the force of circumstances -- breaks out, the International will be a real force and will know what it has to do. Then it will be able to take the revolution into its own hands and give it a direction that will benefit the people: an earnest international organisation of workers' associations from all countries, capable of replacing this departing world of States and bourgeoisie." [The Basic Bakunin, pp. 109-10]
However, while quoting Bakunin refutes part of his thesis, Hobsbawm does base his case on some actual events of Spanish Anarchist history. Therefore we need to look at these cases and show how he gets these wrong. Without an empirical basis, his case obviously falls even without quotes by Bakunin. Luckily the important examples he uses have been analysed by people without the ideological blinkers inherent in Leninism.
While we shall concentrate on just two cases -- Casa Viejas in 1933 and the Jerez rising of 1892 -- a few general points should be mentioned. As Jerome Mintz notes, Hobsbawms' "account is based primarily on a preconceived evolutionary model of political development rather than on data gathered in field research. The model scales labour movements in accord with their progress toward mass parties and central authority. In short, he explains how anarchosyndicalists were presumed to act rather than what actually took place, and the uprising at Casa Viejas was used to prove an already established point of view. Unfortunately, his evolutionary model misled him on virtually every point." [Op. Cit., p. 271] We should also note his "model" is essentially Marxist ideology -- namely, Marx's assertion that his aim for mass political parties expressed the interests of the working class and all other visions were the products of sectarians. Mintz also points out that Hobsbawm does not live up to his own model:
"While Hobsbawm's theoretical model is evolutionary, in his own treatment anarchism is often regarded as unchanging from one decade to the other. In his text, attitudes and beliefs of 1903-5, 1918-20, 1933, and 1936 are lumped together or considered interchangeable. Of course during these decades the anarchosyndicalists had developed their programs and the individuals involved had become more experienced." [Op. Cit., p. 271f]
Hobsbawm believed that Casas Viejas was the classic "anarchist" uprising -- "utopian, millenarian, apocalyptic, as all witnesses agree it to have been." [Primitive Rebels, p. 90] As Mintz states, "the facts prove otherwise. Casas Viejas rose not in a frenzy of blind millenarianism but in response to a call for a nation-wide revolutionary strike. The insurrection of January 1933 was hatched by faistas [members of the FAI] in Barcelona and was to be fought primarily there and in other urban centres. The uprisings in the countryside would be diversionary and designed to keep the civil guard from shifting reinforcements. The faista plot was then fed by intensive newspaper propaganda, by travelling orators, and by actions undertaken by the [CNT] defence committees. Representatives of the defence committees from Casas Viejas and Medina had received instructions at a regional meeting held days before. On January 11, the anarchosyndicalists of Casas Viejas believed that they were joining their companeros who had already been at the barricades since January 8." [Op. Cit., p. 272]
Hobsbawm argued that the uprising occurred in accordance with an established economic pattern:
"Economic conditions naturally determined the timing and periodicity of the revolutionary outbreaks -- for instance, social movements tended to reach a peak intensity during the worse months of the year -- January to March, when farm labourers have least work (the march on Jerez in 1892 and the rising of Casas Viejas in 1933 both occurred early in January), March-July, when the proceeding harvest has been exhausted and times are lean." [Op. Cit., p. 79]
Mintz states the obvious:
"In reality, most agricultural strikes took place in May and June, the period of the harvest and the only time of the year when the campesinos had any leverage against the landowners. The uprising at Casas Viejas occurred in January precisely because it was not an agricultural strike. The timing of the insurrection, hurriedly called to coincide with a planned railway strike that would make it difficult for the government to shift its forces, was determined by strategic rather than economic considerations." [Op. Cit., p. 273]
As for the revolt itself, Hobsbawm asserts that:
"Secure from the outside world, [the men] put up the red and black flag of anarchy and set about dividing the land. They made no attempt to spread the movement or kill anyone." [Op. Cit., p. 274]
Which, as Mintz clearly shows, was nonsense:
"As is already evident, rather than securing themselves from the rest of world, the uprising at Casas Viejas was a pathetic attempt to join in an ill-fated national insurrection. With regard to his second point, there was neither the time nor the opportunity to 'set about dividing the land.' The men were scattered in various locations guarding roads and paths leading to the town. There were no meetings or discussions during this brief period of control. Only a few hours separated the shooting at the barracks and the entrance of the small [government] rescue force from Alcala. Contrary to Hobsbawm's description of peaceful enterprise, at the outset the anarchists surrounding the barracks had fired on the civil guards, mortally wounding two men." [Op. Cit., p. 274]
As can be seen, Hobsbawm was totally wrong about the uprising itself and so it cannot be used as evidence for his thesis. On other, less key issues, he was equally wrong. Mintz gives an excellent summary:
"Since kinship is a key feature in 'primitive' societies, according to Hobsbawm, it was a major factor in the leadership of the sindicato [union] in Casas Viejas.
"There is no evidence that kinship had anything to do with leadership in the anarchist movement in Casa Viejas or anywhere else. The reverse would be closer to the truth. Since the anarchists expressed belief in universal brotherhood, kinship ties were often undermined. In times of strike or in carrying out any decision of the collective membership, obreros conscientes sometimes had to act counter to their kinship demands in order to keep faith with the movement and with their companeros.
"Hobsbawm's specific examples are unfortunately based in part on errors of fact. . .
"Hobsbawm's model [also] requires a charismatic leader. Accordingly, the inspired leader of the uprising is said to be 'old Curro Cruz ('Six Fingers') who issued the call for revolution . . . '
[. . .]
"This celebration of Seisdedo's role ['Six Fingers'], however, ignores the unanimous view of townspeople of every class and political persuasion, who assert that the old man was apolitical and had nothing to do with the uprising . . . every observer and participant in the uprising agrees that Seisdedos was not the leader and was never anything other than a virtuous charcoal burner with but a slight interest in anarchosyndicalism.
[. . .]
"Should the role of charismatic leader be given to someone else in the town? This was not a case of mistaken identity. No single person in Casas Viejas could lay clam to dominating the hearts and minds of the men. . .The sindicato was governed by a junta. Among the cast of characters there is no sign of charismatic leadership . . ." [Op. Cit., pp. 274-6]
Mintz sums up by stating "Hobsbawm's adherence to a model, and the accumulation of misinformation, led him away from the essential conflicts underlying the tragedy and from the reality of the people who participated in it." [Op. Cit., p. 276]
The Jerez uprising of 1892 also fails to provide Hobsbawm with any empirical evidence to support his claims. Indeed, as in Casas Viejas, the evidence actually works against him. The actual events of the uprising are as follows. Just before midnight of 8th January 1892, several hundred workers entered the town of Jerez crying "Long live the revolution! Long live Anarchy!" Armed with only rocks, sticks, scythes and other farm equipment, they marched toward the city jail with the evident intention of releasing its prisoners -- who included many political prisoners, victims of the government's recent anti-anarchist campaign. A few people were killed and the uprising dispersed by a regiment of mounted troops.
Hobsbawm claims this revolt as evidence for his "primitive rebels" thesis. As historian George R. Esenwein argues:
"[T]he Jerez incident cannot be explained in terms of this model. What the millenarian view fails to do in this instance is to credit the workers with the ability to define their own political goals. This is not to deny that there were millenarian aspects of the rising, for the mob action of the workers on the night of 8 January indicates a degree of irrationalism that is consistent with millenarian behaviour. But . . . the agitators seem to have had a clear motive in mind when they rose: they sought to release their comrades from the local jail and thereby demonstrate their defiance of the government's incessant persecution of the International [Workers' Association] movement. However clumsily and crudely they expressed their grievance, the workers were patently aiming to achieve this objective and not to overthrow the local government in order to inaugurate the birth of a libertarian society." [Anarchist Ideology and the Working Class Movement in Spain: 1868-1898, p. 184]
Similarly, many Marxists (and liberal historians) point to the "cycle of insurrections" that occurred during the 1930s. They usually portray these revolts as isolated insurrections organised by the FAI who appeared in villages and proclaimed libertarian communism. The picture is one of disorganisation, millenarianism and a believe in spontaneous revolution inspired by a few militants and their daring actions. Nothing could be further from the truth. The "cycle of insurrections" was far more complex that this, as Juan Gomez Casas makes clear:
"Between 1932 and 1934 . . . the Spanish anarchists tried to destroy the existing social order through a series of increasingly violent strikes and insurrections, which were at first spontaneous, later co-ordinated." [Anarchist Organisation: The History of the FAI, p. 135]
Stuart Christie stresses this point when he wrote "[i]t has been widely assumed that the cycle of insurrections which began in . . . January 1933 were organised and instigated by the FAI . . . In fact the rising had nothing to do with the FAI. It began as an entirely spontaneous local affair directed against a local employer, but quickly mushroomed into a popular movement which threatened to engulf the whole of Catalonia and the rest of Spain . . . [CNT militant] Arturo Parera later confirmed that the FAI had not participated in the aborted movement 'as an organisation.'" [We, the Anarchists, p. 66] While the initial revolts, such as those of the miners of Alto Llobregat in January 1932, were spontaneous acts which caught the CNT and FAI by surprise, the following insurrections became increasingly organised and co-ordinated by those organisations. The January 1933 revolt, as noted above, was based around a planned strike by the CNT railway workers union. The revolt of December 1933 was organised by a National Revolutionary Committee. Both revolts aimed at uprisings all across Spain, based on the existing organisations of the CNT -- the unions and their "Defence committees". Such a degree of planning belies any claims that Spanish Anarchists were "primitive rebels" or did not understand the complexities of modern society or what was required to change it.
Ultimately, Hobsbawm's thesis and its underlying model represents Marxist arrogance and sectarianism. His model assumes the validity of the Marxist claim that true working class movements are based on mass political parties based on hierarchical, centralised, leadership and those who reject this model and political action (electioneering) are sects and sectarians. It was for this reason that Marx, faced with the increased influence of Bakunin, overturned the First International's original basis of free discussion with his own concept of what a real workers' movement should be.
Originally, because the various sections of the International worked under different circumstances and had attained different degrees of development, the theoretical ideals which reflected the real movement would also diverge. The International, therefore, was open to all socialist and working class tendencies. The general policies of the International would be, by necessity, based on conference decisions that reflected the free political development that flowed from local needs. These decisions would be determined by free discussion within and between sections of all economic, social and political ideas. Marx, however, replaced this policy with a common program of "political action" (i.e. electioneering) by mass political parties via the fixed Hague conference of 1872. Rather than having this position agreed by the normal exchange of ideas and theoretical discussion in the sections guided by the needs of the practical struggle, Marx imposed what he considered as the future of the workers movement onto the International -- and denounced those who disagreed with him as sectarians. The notion that what Marx considered as necessary might be another sectarian position imposed on the workers' movement did not enter his head nor that of his followers -- as can be seen, Hobsbawm (mis)interpreted anarchism and its history thanks to this Marxist model and vision.
However, once we look at the anarchist movement without the blinkers created by Marxism, we see that rather than being a movement of "primitive rebels" Spanish Anarchism was a movement of working class people using valid tactics to meet their own social, economic and political goals -- tactics and goals which evolved to meet changing circumstances. Seeing the rise of anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism as the political expression of the class struggle, guided by the needs of the practical struggle they faced naturally follows when we recognise the Marxist model for what it is -- just one possible interpretation of the future of the workers' movement rather than the future of that movement. Moreover, as the history of Social Democracy indicates, the predictions of Bakunin and the anarchists within the First International were proved correct. Therefore, rather than being "primitive rebels" or sectarian politics forced upon the working class, anarchism reflected the politics required to built a revolutionary workers' movement rather than a reformist mass party.
It is fair to say that most Marxists in Britain base their criticisms of the Spanish Anarchism, particularly the revolution of 1936, on the work of Trotskyist Felix Morrow. Morrow's book Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain, first published in 1938, actually is not that bad -- for some kinds of information. However, it is basically written as Trotskyist propaganda. All too often Morrow is inaccurate, and over-eager to bend reality to fit the party line. This is particularly the case when discussing the actions and ideas of the CNT and FAI and when discussing the activities of his fellow Trotskyists in Spain, the Bolshevik-Leninists. We discuss the first set of inaccuracies in the following sections, here we mention the second, Morrow's comments on the Spanish Trotskyists.
The Bolshevik-Leninists, for example, an obscure sect who perhaps numbered 20 members at most, are, according to Morrow, transformed into the only ones who could save the Spanish Revolution -- because they alone were members of the Fourth International, Morrow's own organisation. As he put it:
"Only the small forces of the Bolshevik-Leninists. . . clearly pointed the road for the workers." [Felix Morrow, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain, p. 191]
"Could that party [the party needed to lead the revolution] be any but a party standing on the platform of the Fourth International?" [Op. Cit., p. 248]
And so on. As we will make clear in the following discussion, Morrow was as wrong about this as he was about anarchism.
The POUM -- a more significant Marxist party in Spain, though still tiny compared to the anarchists -- is also written up as far more important than it was, and slagged off for failing to lead the masses to victory (or listening to the Bolshevik-Leninists). The Fourth Internationalists "offered the POUM the rarest and most precious form of aid: a consistent Marxist analysis" [Op. Cit., p. 105] (never mind Spanish workers needing guns and solidarity!). But when such a programme -- prepared in advance -- was offered to the POUM by the Fourth International representative -- only two hours after arriving in Spain, and a quarter of an hour after meeting the POUM [Op. Cit., p. 139] -- the POUM were not interested. The POUM have been both attacked (and claimed as their own) by Trotskyists ever since.
It is Morrow's attacks on anarchism, though, that have most readily entered leftist folklore -- even among Marxists who reject Leninism. Some of Morrow's criticisms are fair enough -- but these were voiced by anarchists long before Morrow put pen to paper. Morrow, in fact, quotes and accepts the analyses of anarchists like Camillo Berneri ("Berneri had been right" etc. [Op. Cit., p. 153]), and praises anarchists like Durruti ("the greatest military figure produced by the war" [Op. Cit., p. 224]) -- then sticks the boot into anarchism. Indeed, Durruti's analysis is praised but he is transformed into "no theoretician, but an activist leader of masses. . . his words express the revolutionary outlook of the class-conscious workers." [Op. Cit., p. 250] Of course, his words, activity and "outlook" (i.e. political analysis) did not spring out of thin air but rather, to state the obvious, were informed by and reflected his anarchist politics, history, activity and vision (which in turn reflected his experiences and needs as a member of the working class). Morrow obviously wanted to have his cake and eat it.
Typically for today's left, perhaps, the most quoted sections of Morrow's book are the most inaccurate. In the next eight sections we discuss some of the most inaccurate claims. After that we point out that Morrow's analysis of the militias is deeply ironic given Trotsky's actions as leader of the Red Army. Then we discuss some of Morrow's inaccurate assertions about anarchism in general.
Of course, some of the errors we highlight in Morrow's work are the product of the conditions in which it was written -- thousands of miles from Spain in America, dependent on papers produced by Spanish Marxists, Anarchists and others. We cannot blame him for such mistakes (although we can blame the Trotskyist publisher who reprints his account without indicating his factual errors and the Marxist writers who repeat his claims without checking their accuracy). We do, however, blame Morrow for his errors and misrepresentations of the activities and politics of the Spanish Anarchists and anarchism in general. These errors derive from his politics and inability to understand anarchism or provide an honest account of it.
By the end of our discussion we hope to show why anarchists argue that Morrow's book is deeply flawed and its objectively skewed by the authors politics and so cannot be taken at face value. Morrow's book may bring comfort to those Marxists who look for ready-made answers and are prepared to accept the works of hacks at face-value. Those who want to learn from the past -- instead of re-writing it -- will have to look elsewhere.
According to Morrow, "Spanish Anarchism had in the FAI a highly centralised party apparatus through which it maintained control of the CNT" [Op. Cit., p. 100]
In reality, the FAI -- the Iberian Anarchist Federation -- was founded, in 1927, as a confederation of regional federations (including the Portuguese Anarchist Union). These regional federations, in turn, co-ordinated local and district federations of highly autonomous anarchist affinity groups. In the words of Murray Bookchin:
"Like the CNT, the FAI was structured along confederal lines: the affinity groups were linked together in a Local Federation and the Local Federation in District and Regional Federations. A Local Federation was administered by an ongoing secretariat, usually of three persons, and a committee composed of one mandated delegate from each affinity group. This body comprised a sort of local executive committee. To allow for a full expression of rank-and-file views, the Local Federation was obliged to convene assemblies of all the faistas in its area. The District and Regional Federations, in turn, were simply the Local federation writ large, replicating the structure of the lower body. All the Local Districts and Regional Federations were linked together by a Peninsular Committee whose tasks, at least theoretically, were administrative. . . [A FAI secretary] admits that the FAI 'exhibited a tendency towards centralism' . . . Yet it must also be emphasised that the affinity groups were far more independent than any comparable bodies in the Socialist Party, much less the Communist. . . the FAI was not an internally repressive organisation . . . Almost as a matter of second nature, dissidents were permitted a considerable amount of freedom in voicing and publishing material against the leadership and established policies." [The Spanish Anarchists, pp. 197-8]
And:
"Most writers on the Spanish labour movement seem to concur in the view that, with the departure of the moderates, the CNT was to fall under the complete domination of the FAI . . . But is this appraisal correct? The FAI . . . was more loosely jointed as an organisation than many of its admirers and critics seem to recognise. It has no bureaucratic apparatus, no membership cards or dues, and no headquarters with paid officials, secretaries, and clerks. . . They jealously guarded the autonomy of their affinity groups from the authority of higher organisational bodies -- a state of mind hardly conducive to the development of a tightly knit, vanguard organisation.
"The FAI, moreover, was not a politically homogeneous organisation which followed a fixed 'line' like the Communists and many Socialists. It had no official program by which all faistas could mechanically guide their actions." [Op. Cit., p. 224]
So, while the FAI may have had centralising tendencies, a "highly centralised" political party it was not. Further, many anarcho-syndicalists and affinity groups were not in the FAI (though most seem to have supported it), and many FAI members put loyalty to the CNT (the anarcho-syndicalist union confederation) first. For instance, according to the minutes of the FAI national plenum of January-February 1936:
"The Regional Committee [of Aragon, Rioja, and Navarra] is completely neglected by the majority of the militants because they are absorbed in the larger activities of the CNT"
And:
"One of the reasons for the poor condition of the FAI was the fact that almost all the comrades were active in the defence groups of the CNT" (report from the Regional Federation of the North).
These are internal documents and so unlikely to be lies. [Juan Gomez Casas, Anarchist Organisation: the History of the FAI, p. 165 and p. 168]
Anarchists were obviously the main influence in the CNT. Indeed, the CNT was anarcho-syndicalist long before the FAI was founded -- from its creation in 1910 the CNT had been anarcho-syndicalist and remained so for 17 years before the FAI existed. However, Morrow was not the only person to assert "FAI control" of the CNT. In fact, the claim of "FAI control" was an invention of a reformist minority within the organisation -- people like Angel Pestana, ex-CNT National Secretary, who wanted to turn the CNT into a politically "neutral" union movement. Pestana later showed what he meant by forming the Syndicalist Party and standing for Parliament (the Cortes). Obviously, in the struggle against the reformists, anarcho-syndicalists -- inside the FAI or not -- voted for people they trusted to run CNT committees. The reformists (called Treinistas) lost, split from the CNT (taking about 10% of the membership with them), and the myth of "FAI dictatorship" was born. Rather than accept that the membership no longer supported them, the Treinistas consoled themselves with tales that a minority, the FAI, had taken control of the CNT.
In fact, due to its decentralised and federal structure, the FAI could not have had the sort of dominance over the CNT that is often attributed to it. At union congresses, where policies and the program for the movement were argued out:
"[D]elegates, whether or not they were members of the FAI, were presenting resolutions adopted by their unions at open membership meetings. Actions taken at the congress had to be reported back to their unions at open meetings, and given the degree of union education among the members, it was impossible for delegates to support personal, non-representative positions." [Juan Gomez Casas, Anarchist Organisation: The History of the FAI, p. 121]
The union committees were typically rotated out of office frequently and committeemen continued to work as wage-earners. In a movement so closely based on the shop floor, the FAI could not maintain influence for long if they ignored the concerns and opinions of co-workers. Moreover, only a minority of the anarcho-syndicalist activists in the CNT belonged to the FAI and, as Juan Gomez Casas points out in his history of the FAI, FAI militants frequently had a prior loyalty to the CNT. Thus his summation seems correct:
"As a minority organisation, the FAI could not possibly have had the kind of control attributed to it . . . in 1931 . . . there were fifty CNT members for each member of a FAI group. The FAI was strongly federalist, with its groups at the base freely associated. It could not dominate an organisation like the CNT, which had fifty times as many members and was also opposed to hierarchy and centralism. We know that FAI militants were also CNT militants, and frequently they were loyal first to the CNT. Their influence was limited to the base of the organisation through participation in the plenums of militants or unions meetings." [Op. Cit., p. 133]
He sums up by arguing:
"The myth of the FAI as conqueror and ruler of the CNT was created basically by the Treinistas" [Op. Cit., p. 134]
Therefore, Morrow is re-cycling an argument which was produced by the reformist wing of the CNT after it had lost influence in the union rank-and-file. Perhaps he judges the FAI by his own standards? After all, the aim of Leninists is for the vanguard party to control the labour unions in their countries. Anarchists reject such a vision and believe in union autonomy -- influence of political parties and groups should only exist in as much as they influence the rank-and-file who control the union. Rather than aim to control the CNT, the FAI worked to influence its membership. In the words of Francisco Ascaso (friend of Durruti and an influential anarchist militant in the CNT and FAI in his own right):
"There is not a single militant who as a 'FAIista' intervenes in union meetings. I work, therefore I am an exploited person. I pay my dues to the workers' union and when I intervene at union meetings I do it as someone who us exploited, and with the right which is granted me by the card in my possession, as do the other militants, whether they belong to the FAI or not." [quoted by Abel Paz, Durruti: The People Armed, p. 137]
In other words, the FAI "controlled" the CNT only to the extent it influenced the membership -- who, in fact, controlled the organisation. We must also note that Ascaso's comment echoes Bakunin's that the "purpose of the Alliance [i.e. anarchist federation] is to promote the Revolution . . . it will combat all ambition to dominate the revolutionary movement of the people, either by cliques or individuals. The Alliance will promote the Revolution only through the NATURAL BUT NEVER OFFICIAL INFLUENCE of all members of the Alliance." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 387]
Regardless of Morrow's claims, the FAI was a federation of autonomous affinity groups in which, as one member put it, "[e]ach FAI group thought and acted as it deemed fit, without bothering about what the others might be thinking or deciding . . . they had no . . . opportunity or jurisdiction . . . to foist a party line upon the grass-roots." [Francisco Carrasquer, quoted by Stuart Christie, We, the Anarchists!, p. 28] There was co-ordination in a federal structure, of course, but that did not create a "highly centralised" party-like organisation. Morrow judged the FAI according to his own standards, squeezing it into his ideological vision of the world rather than reporting the reality of the situation (see Stuart Christie's work for a more detailed refutation of the usual Marxist and Liberal inventions of the activities and nature of the FAI).
In addition, Morrow's picture of the FAI implicitly paints the CNT as a mere "transmission belt" for that organisation (and so a re-production of the Bolshevik position on the relationship of the labour unions and the revolutionary party). Such a picture, however, ignores the CNT's character as a non-hierarchical, democratic (self-managed) mass movement which had many tendencies within it. It also fails to understand the way anarchists seek to influence mass organisations -- not by assuming positions of power but by convincing their fellow workers' of the validity of their ideas in policy making mass assemblies (see section J.3.6 for more details).
In other words, Morrow's claims are simply false and express a total lack of understanding of the nature of the CNT, the FAI and their relationship.
Morrow states that the "tide of the October Revolution had, for a short time, overtaken the CNT. It had sent a delegate to the Comintern [Communist International] Congress in 1921. The anarchists had then resorted to organised fraction work and recaptured it." He links this to the FAI by stating "[t]henceforward . . . the FAI . . . maintained control of the CNT." [Op. Cit., p. 100] Given that the FAI was formed in 1927 and the CNT disassociated itself with the Comintern in 1922, five years before the FAI was created, "thenceforward" does not do the FAI's ability to control the CNT before it was created justice!
Partly it is the inability of the Communist Party and its Trotskyist off-shoots to dominate the CNT which explains Morrow's comments. Seeing anarchism as "petty bourgeois" it is hard to combine this with the obvious truth that a mass, revolutionary, workers' union could be so heavily influenced by anarchism rather than Marxism. Hence the need for FAI (or anarchist) "control" of the CNT. It allows Trotskyists ignore dangerous ideological questions. As J. Romero Maura notes, the question why anarchism influenced the CNT "in fact raises the problem why the reformist social democratic, or alternatively the communist conceptions, did not impose themselves on the CNT as they managed to in most of the rest of Europe. This question . . . is based on the false assumption that the anarcho-syndicalist conception of the workers' struggle in pre-revolutionary society was completely at odds with what the real social process signified (hence the constant reference to religious', 'messianic', models as explanations)." He argues that the "explanation of Spanish anarcho-syndicalist success in organising a mass movement with a sustained revolutionary elan should initially be sought in the very nature of the anarchist concept of society and of how to achieve revolution." [J. Romero Maura, "The Spanish Case", in Anarchism Today, D. Apter and J. Joll (eds.), p. 78 and p. 65] Once we do that, we can see the weakness of Morrow's (and others) "Myth of the FAI" -- having dismissed the obvious reason for anarchist influence, namely its practicality and valid politics, there can only be "control by the FAI."
However, the question of affiliation of the CNT to the Comintern is worth discussing as it indicates the differences between anarchists and Leninists. As will be seen, the truth of this matter is somewhat different to Morrow's claims and indicates well his distorted vision.
Firstly to correct a factual error. The CNT in fact sent two delegations to the Comintern. At its 1919 national congress, the CNT discussed the Russian Revolution and accepted a proposition that stated it "declares itself a staunch defender of the principles upheld by Bakunin in the First International. It declares further that it affiliates provisionally to the Third International on account of its predominantly revolutionary character, pending the holding of the International Congress in Spain, which must establish the foundations which are to govern the true workers' International." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, pp. 220-1] It went on to re-state its long-standing anarchist aims:
"Bearing in mind that the tendency that has the greatest force at the heart of the workers' organisations of all countries is that which leads to the complete, total and absolute liberation of humanity morally, economically and politically, and considering that this objective cannot be achieved until the land and the instruments of production and exchange are socialised, and the tyrannical power of the state disappears, [we] propose to the congress, that in agreement with the essence of the proposals of the workers' International, [it] declares that the ultimate goal of the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo in Spain is libertarian communism." [quoted by Jason Garner, "Separated by an 'Ideological Chasm': The Spanish National Labour Confederation and Bolshevik Internationalism, 1917-1922", pp. 293-326, Contemporary European History, Vol. 15, No. 3, p. 303]
So while the CNT voted to provisionally affiliate with the Communist International, it also reiterated its libertarian politics -- a politics fundamentally at odds with the Bolshevik ideology. This position is not surprising, given the lack of concrete information of what was happening in Russia under the Bolsheviks, lack of awareness of what the Bolsheviks actually stood for and libertarian support for the overthrow of the Tsarist regime and bourgeois Provisional government in 1917. Hence the need for the CNT to send a delegation to Russia in order to investigate at first hand the new regime and what it actually stood for.
In June 1920, Angel Pestana arrived in Moscow and represented the CNT at the Second Congress of the Communist International. He was arrested when he arrived back in Spain and so could not give his eye-witness account of the strangulation of the revolution and the deeply dishonest manipulation of the congress by the Communist Party. A later delegation arrived in April 1921, headed by Andres Nin and Joaquin Maurin professing to represent the CNT. Actually, Nin and Maurin represented virtually no one but the Lerida local federation (their stronghold). Their actions and clams were disavowed by a plenum of the CNT the following August.
How did Nin and Maurin manage to get into a position to be sent to Russia? Simply because of the repression the CNT was under at the time. This was the period when Catalan bosses hired gun men to assassinate CNT militants and members and the police exercised the notorious practice known as ley de fugas (shot while trying to escape). In such a situation, the normal workings of the CNT came under must stress and "with the best known libertarian militants imprisoned, deported, exiled, if not murdered outright, Nin and his group managed to hoist themselves on to the National Committee . . . Pestana's report not being available, it was decided that a further delegation should be sent . . . in response to Moscow's invitation to the CNT to take part in the foundation of the Red International of Labour Unions." [Ignaio de Llorens, The CNT and the Russian Revolution, p. 8] Juan Gomez Casas confirms this account:
"At a plenum held in Lerida in 1921, while the CNT was in disarray [due to repression] in Catalonia, a group of Bolsheviks was designated to represent the Spanish CNT in Russia . . . The restoration of constitutional guarantees by the Spanish government in April 1922, permitted the anarcho-syndicalists to meet in Saragossa in June 11 . . . [where they] confirmed the withdrawal of the CNT from the Third International and the entrance on principle into the new [revolutionary syndicalist] International Working Men's Association." [Anarchist Organisation: History of the FAI, p. 61]
We should note that along with pro-Bolshevik Nin and Maurin was anarchist Gaston Leval. Leval quickly got in touch with Russian and other anarchists, helping some imprisoned Russia anarchists get deported after bringing news of their hunger strike to the assembled international delegates. By embarrassing Lenin and Trotsky, Leval helped save his comrades from the prison camp and so saved their lives.
By the time Leval arrived back in Spain, Pestana's account of his experiences had been published -- along with accounts of the Bolshevik repression of workers, the Kronstadt revolt, the anarchist movement and other socialist parties. These accounts made it clear that the Russian Revolution had become dominated by the Communist Party and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" little more that dictatorship by the central committee of that party. Indeed, leading Bolshevik Grigory Zinoviev had openly admitted this at the Comintern's Second Congress in 1920:
"[t]oday, people like Kautsky come along and say that in Russia you do not have the dictatorship of the working class but the dictatorship of the party. They think this is a reproach against us. Not in the least! We have a dictatorship of the working class and that is precisely why we also have a dictatorship of the Communist Party. The dictatorship of the Communist Party is only a function, an attribute, an expression of the dictatorship of the working class . . . [T]he dictatorship of the proletariat is at the same time the dictatorship of the Communist Party." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 2, p. 928 and pp. 151-2]
Unsurprisingly, then, Pestana report was negative in terms of both the new regime and on whether the CNT should remain affiliated. ["Report on the action taken by the delegate Angel Pestana at the second congress of the third international which was presented by him to the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo", Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 39-103]
Moreover, the way the two internationals operated violated basic libertarian principles. Firstly, the "Red Labour International completely subordinated trade unions to the Communist Party." [Peirats, Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, p. 38] This completely violated the CNT principle of unions being controlled by their members (via self-management from the bottom up). Secondly, the congresses' methodology in its debates and decision-making were alien to the CNT tradition. In that organisation self-management was its pride and glory and its gatherings and congresses reflected this. Pestana could not fathom the fierce struggle surrounding the make-up of the chairmanship of the Comintern congress:
"Pestana says that he was particularly intrigued by the struggle for the chairmanship. He soon realised that the chair was the congress, and that the Congress was a farce. The chairman made the rules, presided over deliberations, modified proposals at will, changed the agenda, and presented proposals of his own. For a start, the way the chair handled the gavel was very inequitable. For example, Zinoviev gave a speech which lasted one and one-half hours, although each speaker was supposedly limited to ten minutes. Pestana tried to rebut the speech, but was cut off by the chairman, watch in hand. Pestana himself was rebutted by Trotsky who spoke for three-quarters of an hour, and when Pestana wanted to answer Trotsky's attack on him, the chairman declared the debate over." [Op. Cit., pp. 37-8]
In addition, "[i]n theory, every delegate was free to table a motion, but the chair itself selected the ones that were 'interesting.' Proportional voting [by delegation or delegate] had been provided for, but was not implemented. The Russian Communist Party ensured that it enjoyed a comfortable majority." Peirats continues by noting that "[t]o top it all, certain important decisions were not even made in the congress hall, but were made begin the scenes." That was how the resolution that "[i]n forthcoming world congresses of the Third International, the national trade union organisations affiliated to it are to be represented by delegates from each country's Communist Party" was adopted. He also noted that "[o]bjections to this decision were quite simply ignored." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, p. 224]
Many of the syndicalist delegates to this "pantomime" congress later meet in Berlin and founded the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers Association based on union autonomy, self-management and federalism. Unsurprisingly, once Pestana and Leval reported back to their organisation, the CNT rejected the Bolshevik Myth and re-affirmed the libertarian principles it had proclaimed at its 1919 congress. At a plenum of the CNT in 1922, the organisation withdrew its provisional affiliation and voted to join the syndicalist International formed in Berlin. As one historian summarises:
"The CNT withdrew from the Profintern because, in line with revolutionary syndicalist doctrine, the vast majority of its members opposed party political influence in the unions. The weakness of the communist-syndicalist position was amply demonstrated when a lull in the repression carried out against the CNT in early 1922 led to the release of the detained militants; as a result they were abruptly removed from their positions and their policy towards Moscow overturned . . . Furthermore, the CNT was not alone: the other founder members of the [syndicalist] IWMA had rejected the Profintern for the same reasons. Although anarchists were influential in some, but by no means all, of the IWMA's member organisations, these were not anarchist but revolutionary syndicalist. [Leading CNT militant Salvador] Segui could have been speaking for all of them when he proclaimed at Zaragoza that the CNT's split from the Profintern resulted from the fact that 'a chasm separates us from Russia, both in ideology and in tactics'." [Garner, Op. Cit., pp. 325-6]
Therefore, rather than the anarchists conducting "fraction work" to "recapture" the CNT, the facts are the pro-Bolshevik National Committee of 1921 came about due to the extreme repression the CNT was suffering at the time. Militants were being assassinated in the streets, including committee members. In this context it is easy to see how an unrepresentative minority could temporarily gain influence in the National Committee. Moreover, it was CNT plenary session which revoked the organisations provisional affiliation to the Comintern -- that is, a regular meeting of mandated and accountable delegates. In other words, by the membership itself who had been informed of what had actually been happening under the Bolsheviks. In addition, it was this plenum which agreed affiliation to the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers Association founded in Berlin during 1922 by syndicalists and anarchists horrified by the Bolshevik dictatorship, having seen it at first hand.
Thus the decision of the CNT in 1922 (and the process by which this decision was made) follow exactly the decisions and processes of 1919. That congress agreed to provisionally affiliate to the Comintern until such time as a real workers' International inspired by the ideas of Bakunin was created. The only difference was that this International was formed in Germany, not Spain. Given this, it is impossible to argue that the anarchists "recaptured" the CNT. The few pro-Bolsheviks in the CNT simply benefited from the impact of State repression against the union as well as the lack of reliable information on the Bolshevik regime from trusted (i.e., non-bourgeois) sources. Once both of these were reduced, their position became as untenable as continued CNT association with the Bolshevik regime and their controlled Internationals:
"Due to the ongoing repression borne by the CNT, its flirtation with Communism lasted longer than would otherwise have been the case. Angel Pestana, its only delegate to attend the second Comintern Congress in Moscow, in the summer of 1920, could not have been more disappointed by his experience. Arrested and held in Italy for two months on his return journey and then imprisoned in Barcelona for 15 more months, he was prevented for a long time from sharing his conclusions with his comrades but his stay in prison was largely used to prepare his report on Communism. In June 1922, at long last, Pestana was able to put forward his views in a national gathering at Zaragoza, where, by an overwhelming majority . . . the CNT duly broke its links with the Comintern. It was ludicrous to expect that a federalist mass organization of this stamp would be prepared to subordinate its initiatives to a small [Spanish Communist Party] that itself was blindly following Moscow's dictates. Furthermore, Anarcho-Syndicalists were by then aware of the bitter attacks levelled against the Bolsheviks by leading European Anarchists and the growing frustration of many Leftists with the authoritarian and repressive character of the Soviet state. The brief romance with the Comintern of the CNT, the largest working-class force in Spain, thus ended." [Francisco J. Romero Salvado, "The Comintern Fiasco in Spain: The Borodin Mission and the Birth of the Spanish Communist Party", pp. 153–177, Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 21, No. 2, p. 166]
As can be seen, Morrow's comment presents radically false image of what happened during this period. Rather than resort to "fraction work" to "recapture" the CNT, the policies of the CNT in 1919 and 1922 were identical. Moreover, the decision to disaffiliate from the Comintern was made by a confederal meeting of mandated delegates representing the rank-and-file as was the original. The anarchists did not "capture" the CNT, rather they continued to influence the membership of the organisation as they had always done. Lastly, the concept of "capture" displays no real understanding of how the CNT worked -- each syndicate was autonomous and self-managed. There was no real officialdom to take over, just administrative posts which were unpaid and conducted after working hours. To "capture" the CNT was impossible as each syndicate would ignore any unrepresentative minority which tried to do so.
However, Morrow's comments allow us to indicate some of the key differences between anarchists and Leninists -- the CNT rejected the Comintern because it violated its principles of self-management, union autonomy and equality and built party domination of the union movement in its place.
Morrow in his discussion of the struggles of the 1930s implies that the CNT was at fault in not joining the Socialist UGT's "Workers' Alliance" (Alianza Obrera). These were first put forward by the Marxist-Leninists of the BOC (Workers and Peasants Bloc -- later to form the POUM) after their attempts to turn the CNT into a Bolshevik vanguard failed [Paul Preston, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War, p. 154]. Socialist Party and UGT interest began only after their election defeat in 1933. By 1934, however, there existed quite a few alliances, including one in Asturias in which the CNT participated. Nationally, however, the CNT refused to join with the UGT and this, he implies, lead to the defeat of the October 1934 uprising (see next section for a discussion of this rebellion).
However, Morrow fails to provide any relevant historical background to understand the CNT's decision. Moreover, their reasons why they did not join have a striking similarity to Morrow's own arguments against the "Workers' Alliance" (which may explain why Morrow does not mention them). In effect, the CNT is dammed for having policies similar to Morrow's but having principles enough to stick to them.
First, we must discuss the history of UGT and CNT relationships in order to understand the context within which the anarchists made their decision. Unless we do this, Morrow's claims may seem more reasonable than they actually are. Once we have done this we will discuss the politics of that decision.
From 1931 (the birth of the Second Spanish Republic) to 1933 the Socialists, in coalition with Republicans, had attacked the CNT (a repeat, in many ways, of the UGT's collaboration with the quasi-fascist Primo de Rivera dictatorship of 1923-30). Laws were passed, with Socialist help, making lightening strikes illegal and state arbitration compulsory. Anarchist-organised strikes were violently repressed, and the UGT provided scabs -- as against the CNT Telephone Company strike of 1931. This strike gives in indication of the role of the socialists during its time as part of the government (Socialist Largo Caballero was the Minister of Labour, for example):
"The UGT . . . had its own bone to pick with the CNT. The telephone syndicate, which the CNT had established in 1918, was a constant challenge to the Socialists' grip on the Madrid labour movement. Like the construction workers' syndicate, it was a CNT enclave in a solidly UGT centre. Accordingly, the government and the Socialist Party found no difficulty in forming a common front to break the strike and weaken CNT influence.
"The Ministry of Labour declared the strike illegal and the Ministry of the Interior called out the Civil Guard to intimidate the strikers . . . Shedding all pretence of labour solidarity, the UGT provided the Compania Telefonica with scabs while El Socialista, the Socialist Party organ, accused the CNT of being run by pistoleros. Those tactics were successful in Madrid, where the defeated strikers were obliged to enrol in the UGT to retain their jobs. So far as the Socialists were concerned, the CNT's appeals for solidarity had fallen on deaf ears. . .
"In Seville, however, the strike began to take on very serious dimensions. . . on July 20, a general strike broke out in Seville and serious fighting erupted in the streets. This strike . . . stemmed from the walkout of the telephone workers . . . pitched battles took place in the countryside around the city between the Civil Guard and the agricultural workers. Maura, as minister of interior, decided to crush the 'insurrection' ruthlessly. Martial law was declared and the CNT's headquarters was reduced to shambles by artillery fire. After nine days, during which heavily armed police detachments patrolled the streets, the Seville general strike came to an end. The struggle in the Andalusian capital left 40 dead and some 200 wounded." [Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, pp. 221-2]
Elsewhere, "[d]uring a Barcelona building strike CNT workers barricaded themselves in and said they would only surrender to regular troops. The army arrived and then machine-gunned them as soon as they surrendered." [Antony Beevor, The Spanish Civil War, p. 33] In other words, the republican-socialist government repressed the CNT with violence as well as using the law to undermine CNT activities and strikes.
Morrow fails to discuss this history of violence against the CNT. He mentions in passing that the republican-socialist coalition government "[i]n crushing the CNT, the troops broadened the repression to the whole working class." He states that "[u]nder the cover of putting down an anarchist putsch in January 1933, the Civil Guard 'mopped up' various groups of trouble makers. And encounter with peasants at Casas Viejas, early in January 1933, became a cause celebre which shook the government to its foundations." However, his account of the Casas Viejas massacre is totally inaccurate. He states that "the little village . . ., after two years of patient waiting for the Institute of Agrarian Reform to divide the neighbouring Duke's estate, the peasants had moved in and begun to till the soil for themselves." [Op. Cit., p. 22]
Nothing could be further from the truth. Firstly, we must note that the land workers (who were not, in the main, peasants) were members of the CNT. Secondly, as we pointed in section 1, the uprising had nothing to do with land reform. The CNT members did not "till the soil", rather they rose in insurrection as part of a planned CNT-FAI uprising based on an expected rail workers strike (the "anarchist putsch" Morrow mentions). The workers were too busy fighting the Civil and Assault Guards to till anything. He is correct in terms of the repression, of course, but his account of the events leading up to it is not only wrong, it is misleading (indeed, it appears to be an invention based on Trotskyist ideology rather than having any basis in reality). Rather than being part of a "broadened . . . repression [against] the whole working class," it was actually part of the "putting down" of the anarchist revolt. CNT members were killed -- along with a dozen politically neutral workers who were selected at random and murdered. Thus Morrow downplays the role of the Socialists in repressing the CNT and FAI -- he presents it as general repression rather than a massacre resulting from repressing a CNT revolt.
He even quotes a Stalinist paper stating that 9 000 political prisoners were in jail in June 1933. Morrow states that they were "mostly workers." [p. 23] Yes, they were mostly workers, CNT members in fact -- "[i]n mid-April [1933]. . . the CNT launched a massive campaign to release imprisoned CNT-FAI militants whose numbers had now soared to about 9 000." [Bookchin, Op. Cit., pp. 231-2]
Moreover, during and after CNT insurrections in Catalonia in 1932, and the much wider insurrections of January 1933 (9 000 CNT members jailed) and December 1933 (16 000 jailed) Socialist solidarity was nil. Indeed, the 1932 and January 1933 revolts had been repressed by the government which the Socialist Party was a member of.
In other words, and to state the obvious, the socialists had been part of a government which repressed CNT revolts and syndicates, imprisoned and killed their members, passed laws to restrict their ability to strike and use direct action and provided scabs during strikes. Little wonder that Peirats states "[i]t was difficult for the CNT and the FAI to get used to the idea of an alliance with their Socialist oppressors." [Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, p. 94]
It is only in this context can we understand the events of 1934 and the refusal of the CNT to run into the UGT's alliance. Morrow, needless to say, does not present this essential context and so the reader cannot understand why the CNT acted as it did in response to Socialist appeals for "unity." Instead, Morrow implies that CNT-FAI opposition to "workers alliances" were due to them believing "all governments were equally bad." [p. 29] Perhaps if Morrow had presented an honest account of the repression the republican-socialist government had inflicted on the CNT then the reader could make an informed judgement on why anarchist opposition to the socialist proposals existed. Rather than being sectarian or against labour unity, they had been at receiving end of extensive socialist scabbing and state repression.
Moreover, as well as the recent history of socialist repression and scabbing, there was also the experience of a similar alliance between the CNT and UGT that had occurred in 1917. The first test of the alliance came with a miners strike in Andalusia, and a "CNT proposal for a joint general strike, to be initiated by UGT miners and railway workers, had been rejected by the Madrid Socialists . . . the miners, after striking for four months, returned to work in defeat." Little wonder that "the pact was in shreds. It was to be eliminated completely when a general strike broke out in Barcelona over the arrests of the CNT leaders and the assassination of Layret. Once again the CNT called upon the UGT for support. Not only was aid refused but it was denied with an arrogance that clearly indicated the Socialists had lost all interest in future collaboration. . . The strike in Catalonia collapsed and, with it, any prospect of collaboration between the two unions for years to come." [Bookchin, Op. Cit., pp. 175-6]
Of course, such historical context would confuse readers with facts and so goes unmentioned by Morrow.
In addition, there was another reason for opposing the "workers' alliances" -- particularly an alliance between the UGT and CNT. Given the history of UGT and CNT pacts plus the actions of the UGT and socialists in the previous government it was completely sensible and politically principled. This reason was political and flowed from the CNT's libertarian vision. As Durruti argued in 1934:
"The alliance, to be revolutionary, must be genuinely working class. It must be the result of an agreement between the workers' organisation, and those alone. No party, however, socialist it may be, can belong to a workers' alliance, which should be built from its foundations, in the enterprises where the workers struggle. Its representative bodies must be the workers' committee chosen in the shops, the factories, the mines and the villages. We must reject any agreement on a national level, between National Committees, but rather favour an alliance carried out at the base by the workers themselves. Then and only then, can the revolutionary drive come to life, develop and take root." [quoted by Abel Paz, Durruti: The People Armed, p. 154]
In the Central Region, Orobon Fernandez argued along similar lines in Madrid's La Tierra:
"Revolutionary proletarian democracy is direct management of society by the workers, a certain bulwark against party dictatorships and a guarantee of the development of the revolution's forces and undertakings. . . what matters must is that general guidelines are laid down so that these may serve as a platform of the alliance and furnish a combative and constructive norm for the united forces . . . [These include:] acceptance of revolutionary proletarian democracy, which is to say, the will of the majority of the proletariat, as the common denominator and determining factor of the new order of things. . . immediate socialisation of the means of production, transportation, exchange, accommodation and finance . . . federated according to their area of interest and confederated at national level, the municipal and industrial organisations will maintain the principle of unity in the economic structure." [quoted by Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 74-5]
The May 1936 Saragossa congress of the CNT passed a resolution concerning revolutionary alliances which was obviously based on these arguments. It stated that in order "to make the social revolution an effective reality, the social and political system regulating the life of the country has to be utterly destroyed" and that the "new revolutionary order will be determined by the free choice of the working class." [quoted by Jose Peirats, Op. Cit., p. 100]
Only such an alliance, from the bottom up and based on workers' self-management could be a revolutionary one. Indeed, any pact not based on this but rather conducted between organisations would be a pact the CNT and the bureaucracy of the UGT -- and remove any possibility of creating genuine bodies of working class self-management (as the history of the Civil War proved). Indeed, Morrow seems to agree:
"The broad character of the proletarian insurrection was explained by the Communist Left (Trotskyist). It devoted itself to efforts to build the indispensable instrument of the insurrection: workers' councils constituted by delegates representing all the labour parties and unions, the shops and streets; to be created in every locality and joined together nationally . . . Unfortunately, the socialists failed to understand the profound need of these Workers' Alliances. The bureaucratic traditions were not to be so easily overcome . . . the socialist leaders thought that the Workers' Alliances meant they would have merely to share leadership with the Communist Left and other dissident communist groups . . . actually in most cases they [Workers' Alliances] were merely 'top' committees, without elected or lower-rank delegates, that is, little more than liaison committees between the leadership of the organisations involved." [Op. Cit., pp. 27-8]
As can be seen, this closely follows Durruti's arguments. Bar the reference of "labour parties," Morrow's "indispensable instrument" is identical to Durruti's and other anarchist's arguments against taking part in the "Workers' Alliances" created by the UGT and the creation of genuine alliances from the bottom-up. Thus Morrow faults the CNT for trying to force the UGT to form a real workers' alliance by not taking part in what Morrow himself admits were "little more than liaison committees between the leadership"! Also, Morrow argues that "[w]ithout developing soviets -- workers' councils -- it was inevitable that even the anarchists and the POUM would drift into governmental collaboration with the bourgeoisie" and he asks "[h]ow could party agreements be the substitute for the necessary vast network of workers' councils?" [Op. Cit., p. 89 and p. 114] Which was, of course, the CNT-FAI's argument. It seems strange that Morrow faults the CNT for trying to create real workers' councils, the "indispensable instrument" of the revolution, by not taking part in a "party agreements" urged by the UGT which would undermine real attempts at rank-and-file unity from below.
Of course, Morrow's statement that "labour parties and unions" should be represented by delegates as well as "the shop and street" contradicts claims it would be democratic. After all, that it would mean that some workers would have multiple votes (one from their shop, their union and their party). Moreover, it would mean that parties would have an influence greater than their actual support in the working class -- something a minuscule group like the Spanish Trotskyists would obviously favour as would the bureaucrats of the Socialist and Communist Parties. Little wonder the anarchists urged a workers' alliance made up of actual workers rather than an organisation which would allow bureaucrats, politicians and sects more influence than they actually had or deserved.
In addition, the "Workers' Alliances" were not seen by the UGT and Socialist Party as an organisation of equals. Rather, in words of historian Paul Preston, "from the first it seemed that the Socialists saw the Alianza Obrera was a possible means of dominating the workers movement in areas where the PSOE and UGT were relatively weak." [Op. Cit., p. 154] The Socialist Party only allowed regional branches of the Alianza Obrera to be formed only if they could guarantee Party control would never be lost. [Adrian Schubert "The Epic Failure: The Asturian Revolution of October 1934", in Revolution and War in Spain, Paul Preston (ed.), p. 127] Raymond Carr argues that the Socialists, "in spite of professions to the contrary, wished to keep socialist domination of the Alianza Obrera" [Spain: 1808-1975, pp. 634-5f] And only one month after the first alliance was set up, one of its founder members -- the Catalan Socialist Union -- left in protest over PSOE domination. [Preston, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War, p. 157] In Madrid, the Alianza was "dominated by the Socialists, who imposed their own policy." [Op. Cit., p. 154] Indeed, as Jose Peirats notes, in Asturias where the CNT had joined the Alliance, "despite the provisions of the terms of the alliance to which the CNT had subscribed, the order for the uprising was issued by the socialists. In Oviedo a specifically socialist, revolutionary committee was secretly at work in Oviedo, which contained no CNT representatives." [The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 78] Largo Caballero's desire for trade union unity in 1936 was from a similar mould -- "[t]he clear implication was that proletarian unification meant Socialist take-over." Little wonder Preston states that "[i]f the use that he [Caballero] made of the Alianza Obreras in 1934 had revealed anything, it was that the domination of the working class movement by the UGT meant far more to Largo Caballero than any future prospect of revolution." [Preston, Op. Cit., p. 270]
As can be seen, the CNT's position seemed a sensible one given the nature and activities of the "Workers' Alliance" in practice. Also it seems strange that, if unity was the UGT's aims, that a CNT call, made by the national plenary in February 1934, for information and for the UGT to clearly and publicly state its revolutionary objectives, met with no reply. [Peirats, Op. Cit., p. 75] In addition, the Catalan Workers' Alliance called a general strike in March 1934 the day after the CNT's -- hardly an example of workers' unity. [Norman Jones, "Regionalism and Revolution in Catalonia", Revolution and War in Spain, Paul Preston (ed.), p. 102]
Thus, the reasons why the CNT did not join in the UGT's "Workers' Alliance" are clear. As well as the natural distrust towards organisations that had repressed them and provided scabs to break their strikes just one year previously, there were political reasons for opposing such an alliance. Rather than being a force to ensure revolutionary organisations springing from the workplace, the "Workers' Alliance" was little more than pacts between the bureaucrats of the UGT and various Marxist Parties. This was Morrow's own argument, which also provided the explanation why such an alliance would weaken any real revolutionary movement. To requote Morrow, "[w]ithout developing soviets -- workers' councils -- it was inevitable that even the anarchists and the POUM would drift into governmental collaboration with the bourgeoisie." [Op. Cit., p. 89]
That is exactly what happened in July, 1936, when the CNT did forsake its anarchist politics and joined in a "Workers' Alliance" type organisation with other anti-fascist parties and unions to set up the "Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias" (see section 20). Thus Morrow himself provides the explanation of the CNT's political rationale for being wary of the UGT's "Workers' Alliance" while, of course, refusing to provide the historical context the decision was made.
However, while the CNT's refusal to join the "Workers' Alliance" outside of Asturias may have been principled (and sensible), it may be argued that they were the only organisation with revolutionary potential (indeed, this would be the only argument Trotskyists could put forward to explain their hypocrisy). Such an argument would be false for two reason.
Firstly, such Alliances may have potentially created a revolutionary situation but they would have hindered the formation of working class organs of self-management such as workers' councils (soviets). This was the experience of the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias and of the Asturias revolt -- in spite of massive revolutionary upheaval such councils based on delegates from workplace and community assembles were not formed.
Secondly, the CNT policy of "Unity, yes, but by the rank-and-file" was a valid method of "from the bottom up solidarity." This can be seen from just two examples -- Aragon in 1934 and Madrid in 1936. In Aragon, there was a "general strike that had totally paralysed the Aragonese capital throughout April 1935, ending . . . on 10 May. . . the Zaragoza general strike had been a powerful advertisement of the value of a united working-class front . . . [However,] no formal agreement . . . had been reached in Zaragoza. The pact there has been created on a purely circumstantial basis with a unity of trade-union action achieved in quite specific circumstances and generated to a considerable extent by the workers themselves." [Graham Kelsey, Anarchism in Aragon, p. 72] In Madrid, April 1936 (in the words of Morrow himself) "the CNT declared a general strike in Madrid . . . The UGT had not been asked to join the strike, and at first had denounced it . . . But the workers came out of all the shops and factories and public services . . . because they wanted to fight, and only the anarchists were calling them to struggle." [Op. Cit., p. 41]
Thus Morrow's comments against the CNT refusing to join the Workers' Alliance do not provide the reader with the historical context required to make an informed judgement of the CNT's decision. Moreover, they seem hypocritical as the CNT's reasons for refusing to join is similar to Morrow's own arguments against the Workers' Alliance. In addition, the CNT's practical counter-proposal of solidarity from below had more revolutionary potential as it was far more likely to promote rank-and-file unity plus the creation of self-managed organisations such as workers' councils. The Workers' Alliance system would have hindered such developments.
Again, following Morrow, Marxists have often alleged that the Socialist and Workers Alliance strike wave, of October 1934, was sabotaged by the CNT. To understand this allegation, you have to understand the background to October 1934, and the split in the workers' movement between the CNT and the UGT (unions controlled by the reformist Socialist Party, the PSOE).
Socialist conversion to "revolution" occurred only after the elections of November 1933. In the face of massive and bloody repression (see last section), the CNT-FAI had agitated for a mass abstention at the polling booth. Faced with this campaign, the republicans and socialists lost and all the laws they had passed against the CNT were used against themselves. When cabinet seats were offered to the non-republican (fascist or quasi-fascist) right, in October 1934, the PSOE/UGT called for a general strike. If the CNT, nationally, failed to take part in this -- a mistake recognised by many anarchist writers -- this was not (as reading Morrow suggests) because the CNT thought "all governments were equally bad" [Morrow, Op. Cit., p. 29], but because of well-founded, as it turned out, mistrust of Socialist aims.
A CNT call, on the 13th of February 1934, for the UGT to clearly and publicly state its revolutionary objectives, had met with no reply. As Peirats argues, "[t]hat the absence of the CNT did not bother them [the UGT and Socialist Party] is clear from their silence in regards to the [CNT's] National Plenary's request." [Peirats, Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, p. 96] Rhetoric aside, the Socialist Party's main aim in October seems to have been to force new elections, so they could again form a (mildly reformist) coalition with the Republicans (their programme for the revolt was written by right-wing socialist Indalecio Prieto and seemed more like an election manifesto prepared by the Liberal Republicans than a program for revolutionary change). This was the viewpoint of the CNT, for example. Thus, the CNT, in effect, was to be used as cannon-fodder to help produce another government that would attack the CNT.
As we discussed in the last section, the UGT backed "Workers Alliances" were little better. To repeat our comments again, the Socialist Party (PSOE) saw the alliances as a means of dominating the workers movement in areas where the UGT was weak. The Socialist "Liaison Committee", for instance, set up to prepare for insurrection, only allowed regional branches to take part in the alliances if they could guarantee Party control (see last section). Raymond Carr argues that the Socialists, "in spite of professions to the contrary, wished to keep socialist domination of the Alianza Obrera." [Spain: 1808-1975, pp. 634-5f] Only one month after the first alliance was set up, one of its founder members -- the Socialist Union of Catalonia -- left in protest over PSOE domination.
During October the only real centre of resistance was in Asturias (on the Spanish north coast). However, before discussing that area, we must mention Madrid and Barcelona. According to Morrow, Catalonia "should have been the fortress of the uprising" and that "[t]erribly discredited for their refusal to join the October revolt, the anarchists sought to apologise by pointing to the repression they were undergoing at the time from Companys." [Op. Cit., p. 30 and p. 32] Morrow fails, however and yet again, to mention a few important facts.
Firstly, the uprising in Catalonia was pushed for and lead by Estat Catala which had "temporary ascendancy over the other groups in the Esquerra" (the Catalan Nationalist Party which was the Catalan government). "Companys felt obliged to yield to Dencas' [the leader of Estat Catala] demand that Catalonia should take this opportunity for breaking with Madrid." [Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth, pp. 282-3] Estat Catala "was a Youth movement . . . and composed mostly of workmen and adventurers -- men drawn from the same soil as the sindicatos libres [boss created anti-CNT yellow unions] of a dozen years before -- with a violent antagonism to the Anarcho-Syndicalists. It had a small military organisation, the escamots, who wore green uniforms. It represented Catalan Nationalism in its most intransigent form: it was in fact Catalan Fascism." [Op. Cit., p. 282] Gabriel Jackson calls Estat Catala a "quasi-fascist movement within the younger ranks of the Esquerra." [The Spanish Republic and the Civil War: 1931-1939, p. 150] Ronald Fraser terms it "the extreme nationalist and proto-fascist" wing of the party. [Blood of Spain, p. 535] Hugh Thomas notes "the fascist colouring of Dencas ideas." [The Spanish Civil War, p. 135]
In other words, Morrow attacks the CNT for not participating in a revolt organised and led by Catalan Fascists (or, at best, near fascists)!
Secondly, far from being apologetics, the repression the CNT was suffering from Dencas police forces was very real and was occurring right up to the moment of the revolt. In the words of historian Paul Preston:
"[T]he Anarchists bitterly resented the way in which the Generalitat had followed a repressive policy against them in the previous months. This had been the work of the Generalitat's counsellor for public order, Josep Dencas, leader of the quasi-fascist, ultra-nationalist party Estat Catala." [The Coming of the Spanish Civil War, p. 176]
This is confirmed by anarchist accounts of the rising. As Peirats points out:
"On the eve of the rebellion the Catalan police jailed as many anarchists as they could put their hands on . . . The union offices had been shut for some time. The press censor had completely blacked out the October 6th issue of Solidaridad Obrera . . . When the woodworkers began to open their offices, they were attacked by the police, and a furious gunfight ensured. The official radio . . . reported . . . that the fight had already began against the FAI fascists . . . In the afternoon large numbers of police and escamots turned out to attack and shut down the editorial offices of Solidaridad Obrera." [Peirats, Op. Cit., pp. 98-9]
In other words, the first shots fired in the Catalan revolt were against the CNT by those in revolt against the central government!
Why were the first shots of the revolt directed at the members of the CNT? Simply because they were trying to take part in the revolt in an organised and coherent manner as urged by the CNT's Regional Committee itself. In spite of the mass arrests of anarchists and CNT militants the night before by the Catalan rebels, the CNT's Catalan Regional Committee issued a clandestine leaflet that stated that the CNT "must enter the battle in a manner consistent with its revolutionary anarchist principles . . . The revolt which broke out this morning must acquire the characteristics of a popular act through the actions of the proletariat . . . We demand the right to intervene in this struggle and we will take this." A leaflet had to be issued as Solidaridad Obrera was several hours late in appearing due censorship by the Catalan state. The workers had tried to open their union halls (all CNT union buildings had been closed by the Catalan government since the CNT revolt of December 1933) because the CNT's leaflet had called for the "[i]mmediate opening of our union buildings and the concentration of the workers on those premises." [quoted by Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 85] The participation of the CNT in the revolt as an organised force was something the Catalan rebels refused to allow and so they fired on workers trying to open their union buildings. Indeed, after shutting down Solidaridad Obrera, the police then tried to break up the CNT's regional plenum that was then in session, but fortunately it was meeting on different premises and so they failed. [Peirats, Op. Cit., pp. 85-6]
Juan Gomez Casas argues that:
"The situation [in October 1934] was especially difficult in Catalonia. The Workers' Alliance . . . declared a general strike. Luis Companys, president of the Catalan Parliament, proclaimed the Catalan State within the Spanish Federal Republic . . . But at the same time, militants of the CNT and the FAI were arrested . . . Solidaridad Obrera was censored. The Catalan libertarians understood that the Catalan nationalists had two objectives in mind: to oppose the central government and to destroy the CNT. Jose Dencas, Counsellor of Defence, issued a strict order: 'Watch out for the FAI' . . . Luis Companys broadcast a message on October 5 to all 'citizens regardless of ideology.' However, many anarchosyndicalist militants were held by his deputy, Dencas, in the underground cells of police headquarters." [Op. Cit., pp. 151-2]
Hence the paradoxical situation in which the anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists and FAI members found themselves in during this time. The uprising was organised by Catalan fascists who continued to direct their blows against the CNT. As Abel Paz argues, "[f]or the rank and file Catalan worker . . . the insurgents . . . were actually orienting their action in order to destroy the CNT. After that, how could they collaborate with the reactionary movement which was directing its blows against the working class? Here was the paradox of the Catalan uprising of October 6, 1934." [Durruti: The People Armed, p. 158]
In other words, during the Catalan revolt, "the CNT had a difficult time because the insurgents were its worst enemies." [Peirats, The Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, p. 98] However, the complexity of the actual situation does not bother the reader of Morrow's work as it is not reported. Little wonder, as Peirats argues, the "absurd contention according to which the confederal proletariat of Catalonia betrayed their brethren in Asturias melts away in the face of a truthful narration of the facts." [The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 86]
In summary, therefore, Morrow expected the membership of the Catalan CNT and FAI to join in a struggle started and directed by Catalan fascists, whose leaders in the government were arresting and shooting their members, censoring their press, closing their union offices and refusing them a role in the revolt as self-organised forces. We think that sums up the validity of Trotskyism as a revolutionary theory quite well.
In Madrid, the revolt was slightly less farcical. Here the CNT joined the general strike. However, the UGT gave the government 24 hours notice of the general strike, allowing the state to round up the Socialist "leaders," seize arm depots and repress the insurrection before it got started [Morrow, Op. Cit., p. 30]. As Bookchin argues, the "massive strike in Madrid, which was supported by the entire left, foundered for want of arms and a revolutionary sense of direction." [Op. Cit., p. 245] He continues:
"As usual, the Socialists emerged as unreliable allies of the Anarchists. A revolutionary committee, established by the CNT and FAI to co-ordinate their own operations, was denied direly needed weapons by the UGT. The arms, as it turned out, had been conveniently intercepted by government troops. But even if they had been available, it is almost certain that the Socialists would not have shared them with the Anarchists. Indeed, relationships between the two major sectors of the labour movement had already been poisoned by the failure of the Socialist Youth and the UGT to keep the CNT adequately informed of their plans or confer with Anarchosyndicalist delegates. Despite heavy fighting in Madrid, the CNT and FAI were obliged to function largely on their own. When, at length, a UGT delegate informed the revolutionary committee that Largo Caballero was not interested in common action with the CNT, the committee disbanded." [Op. Cit., p. 246]
Bookchin correctly states that "Abad de Santillan was to observe with ample justification that Socialist attempts to blame the failure of the October Insurrection on Anarchist abstention was a shabby falsehood" and quotes Santillan:
"Can there be talk of abstention of the CNT and censure of it by those who go on strike without warning our organisation about it, who refuse to meet with the delegates of the National Committee [of the CNT], who consent to let the Lerrous-Gil Robles Government take possession of the arms deposits and let them go unused before handing them over to the Confederation and the FAI?" [Ibid.]
Historian Paul Preston confirms that in Madrid "Socialists and Anarchists went on strike . . ." and that "the Socialists actually rejected the participation of Anarchist and Trotskyist groups who offered to help make a revolutionary coup in Madrid." [The Coming of the Spanish Civil War, p. 174] Moreover, "when delegates travelled secretly to Madrid to try to co-ordinate support for the revolutionary Asturian miners, they were rebuffed by the UGT leadership." [Graham Kelsey, Anarchism in Aragon, p. 73]
Therefore, in two of the three centres of the revolt, the uprising was badly organised. In Catalonia, the revolt was led by fascist Catalan Nationalists who arrested and shot at CNT militants. In Madrid, the CNT backed the strike and was ignored by the Socialists. The revolt itself was badly organised and quickly repressed (thanks, in part, to the actions of the Socialists themselves). Little wonder Peirats asks:
"Although it seems absurd, one constantly has to ask whether the Socialists meant to start a true revolution [in October 1934] in Spain. If the answer is affirmative, the questions keep coming: Why did they not make the action a national one? Why did they try to do it without the powerful national CNT? Is a peaceful general strike revolutionary? Was what happened in Asturias expected, or were orders exceeded? Did they mean only to scare the Radical-CEDA government with their action?" [The Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, pp 95-6]
The only real centre of resistance was in Asturias (on the Spanish north coast). Here, the CNT had joined the Socialists and Communists in a "Workers Alliance". But, against the alliance's terms, the Socialists alone gave the order for the uprising -- and the Socialist-controlled Provincial Committee starved the CNT of arms. This despite the CNT having over 22 000 affiliates in the area (to the UGT's 40 000). We discuss the activities of the CNT during the revolt in Asturias later (in section 20) and so will do so here.
Morrow states that the "backbone of the struggle was broken . . . when the refusal of the CNT railroad workers to strike enabled the government to transport goods and troops." [Morrow, Op. Cit., p. 30] Yet in Asturias (the only area where major troop transportation was needed) the main government attack was from a sea borne landing of Foreign Legion and Moroccan troops - against the port and CNT stronghold (15 000 affiliates) of Gijon (and, we must stress, the Socialists and Communists refused to provide the anarchists of these ports with weapons to resist the troop landings). Hence his claim seems somewhat at odds with the actual events of the October uprising.
Moreover, he seems alone in this claim. No other historian (for example, Hugh Thomas in The Spanish Civil War, Raymond Carr in Spain: 1808-1975, Paul Preston in The Coming of the Spanish Civil War, Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth, Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War: 1931-1939) makes this claim. But, of course, these are not Trotskyists and so can be ignored. However, for objective readers such an omission might be significant.
Indeed, when these other historians do discuss the crushing of the Asturias they all stress the fact that the troops came from the sea. For example, Paul Preston notes that "[w]ith CEDA approval, Franco . . . insisted on the use of troops from Africa . . . they shipped Moorish mercenaries to Asturias." [The Coming of the Spanish Civil War, p. 177] Gabriel Jackson argues that the government "feared to send in the regular Army because of the strong possibility that the Spanish conscripts would refuse to fire on the revolutionaries -- or even desert to them. The War Minister . . . , acting on the advice of Generals Franco and Goded, sent in contingents of the Morrish regulares and of the Foreign Legions." These troops arrived "at the ports of Aviles and Gijon." [The Spanish Republic and the Civil War: 1931-1939, p. 157]
Richard A. H. Robinson argues that it "was soon decided that the [Asturias] rebellion could only be crushed by experienced, professional troops. The other areas of Spain could not be denuded of their garrisons in case there were other revolutionary outbreaks. Franco therefore called upon Colonel Yague to lead a force of Moorish regulars to help re-conquer the province from the rebels." [The Origins of Franco's Spain, pp. 190-1] Stanley G. Payne gives a more detailed account of the state's attack:
"Army reinforcements were soon being rushed toward the region . . . Eduardo Lopez Ochoa . . . head[ed] the main relief column . . . he began to make his way eastward [from Galicia] with a modest force of some 360 troops in trucks, half of whom had to be detached on the way to hold the route open. Meanwhile . . . in the main Asturian coastal city of Gijon . . . reinforcements first arrived by sea on the seventh, followed by larger units from the Moroccan Protectorate on the tenth." [Spain's First Democracy, p. 219]
No mention of trains in these accounts, so indicating that Morrow's assertions are false. The main attack on Asturias, and so the transportation of troops and goods, was by sea, not by trains.
In addition, these historians point to other reasons for the defeat of the revolt -- the amazingly bad organisation of it by the Socialist Party. Raymond Carr sums up the overwhelming opinion of the historians when he says that "[a]s a national movement the revolution was a fiasco." [Op. Cit., p. 633] Hugh Thomas states that the revolt in Catalonia was "crushed nearly as quickly as the general strike had been in Madrid." [The Spanish Civil War, p. 136] Brenan correctly argues that "[f]rom the moment that Barcelona capitulated and the rising in Madrid fizzled out, the miners were of course doomed." [Op. Cit., p. 286] The failure of both these revolts was directly attributable to the policies and actions of the Socialists who controlled the "Workers' Alliances" in both areas. Hence historian Paul Heywood:
"[A]n important factor which contributed to the strikes' collapse and made the state's task easier was the underlying attitude of the Socialists. For all the talk of united action by the Left, the Socialists still wished to dominate any combined moves. Unwilling to cede its traditional hegemony, the PSOE rendered the Alianze obrera necessarily ineffective . . .
"Thus, there was little genuine unity on the Spanish Left. Moreover, the strike was very poorly planned. Differences within the PSOE meant that there was no agreement even as to the programme of the strike. For the . . . leftists, it represented the initiation of a full-scale Socialist revolution; for . . . the centrists in the party, the aim of the strike was to force Alcala-Zamora to reconsider and invite the Socialists back into a coalition government with the Republicans." [Marxism and the Failure of Organised Socialism in Spain 1879-1936 pp. 144-5]
Significantly, Heywood argues that "[o]ne thing, however, did emerge from the October strike. The example of Asturias provided a pointed lesson for the Left: crucially, the key to the relative success of the insurrection there was the participation of the CNT in an effective Alianza obrera. Without the CNT, the Asturian rising would have been as short-lived and as easily defeated as those in Madrid and Barcelona." [Op. Cit., p. 145]
Having discussed both Madrid and Barcelona above, we leave it to the reader to conclude whether Morrow's comments are correct or whether a more likely alternative explanation for the revolt's failure is possible.
However, even assuming Morrow's claims that the failure of the CNT rail workers' union to continue striking in the face of a completely farcical "revolt" played a key role in its defeat were true, it does not explain many facts. Firstly, the government had declared martial law -- placing the railway workers in a dangerous position. Secondly, as Jerome R. Mintz points out, railway workers "were represented by two competing unions -- the Sindicato Nacional Ferroviario of the UGT . . . and the CNT-affiliated FNIFF . . . The UGT . . . controlled the large majority of the workers. [In 1933] Trifon Gomez, secretary of the UGT union, did not believe it possible to mobilise the workers, few of whom had revolutionary aspirations." [The Anarchists of Casa Viejas, p. 178] Outside of Catalonia, the majority of the railway workers belonged to the UGT [Sam Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives, p. 90f] Asturias (the only area where major troop transportation was needed) does not border Catalonia -- apparently the army managed to cross Spain on a rail network manned by a minority of its workers.
However, these points are of little import when compared to the fact that Asturias the main government attack was, as we mentioned above, from a sea borne landing of Foreign Legion and Moroccan troops. Troops from Morocco who land by sea do not need trains. Indeed, The ports of Aviles and Gijon were the principle military bases for launching the repression against the uprising.
The real failure of the Asturias revolt did not lie with the CNT, it lay (unsurprisingly enough) with the Socialists and Communists. Despite CNT pleas the Socialists refused arms, Gjon fell after a bloody struggle and became the main base for the crushing of the entire region ("Arriving at the ports of Aviles and Gijon on October 8, these troops were able to overcome the resistance of the local fishermen and stevedores. The revolutionary committees here were Anarchist dominated. Though they had joined the rising and accepted the slogan UHP [Unity, Proletarian Brothers], the Socialists and Communists of Oviedo clearly distrusted them and had refused arms to their delegate the day before." [Gabriel Jackson, Op. Cit., p. 157]).
This Socialist and Communist sabotage of Anarchist resistance was repeated in the Civil War, less than two years later.
As can be seen, Morrow's account of the October Insurrection of 1934 leaves a lot to be desired. The claim that the CNT was responsible for its failure cannot withstand a close examination of the events. Indeed, by providing the facts which Morrow does not provide we can safely say that the failure of the revolt across Spain rested squarely with the PSOE and UGT. It was badly organised, they failed to co-operate or even communicate with CNT when aid was offered, they relied upon the enemies of the CNT in Catalonia and refused arms to the CNT in both Madrid and Asturias (so allowing the government force, the main force of which landed by sea, easy access to Asturias). All in all, even if the minority of railway workers in the CNT had joined the strike it would have, in all probability, resulted in the same outcome.
Unfortunately, Morrow's assertions have become commonplace in the ranks of the Left and have become even more distorted in the hands of his Trotskyist readers. For example, we find Nick Wrack arguing that the "Socialist Party called a general strike and there were insurrectionary movements in Asturias and Catalonia, In Madrid and Catalonia the anarchist CNT stood to one side, arguing that this was a 'struggle between politicians' and did not concern the workers even though this was a strike against a move to incorporate fascism into the government." He continues, "[i]n Asturias the anarchist militants participated under the pressure of the masses and because of the traditions of unity in that area. However, because of their abstentionist stupidity, the anarchists elsewhere continued to work, even working trains which brought the Moorish troops under Franco to suppress the Asturias insurrection." ["Marxism, Anarchism and the State", pp. 31-7, Militant International Review, no. 46, p. 34]
Its hard to work out where to start in this travesty of history. We will start with the simple errors. The CNT did take part in the struggle in Madrid. As Paul Preston notes, in Madrid the "Socialists and Anarchists went on strike" [The Coming of the Spanish Civil War, p. 174] In Catalonia, as indicated above, the "insurrectionary movement" in Catalonia was organised and lead by Catalan Fascists, who shot upon CNT members when they tried to open their union halls and who arrested CNT and FAI militants the night before the uprising. Moreover, the people organising the revolt had been repressing the CNT for months previously. Obviously attempts by Catalan Fascists to become a government should be supported by socialists, including Trotskyists. Moreover, the UGT and PSOE had worked with the quasi-fascist Primo do Rivera dictatorship during the 1920s. The hypocrisy is clear. So much for the CNT standing "to one side, arguing that this was a 'struggle between politicians' and did not concern the workers even though this was a strike against a move to incorporate fascism into the government."
His comments that "the anarchists . . . work[ed] trains which brought the Moorish troops under Franco to suppress the Asturias insurrection" is just plain silly. It was not anarchists who ran the trains, it was railway workers -- under martial law -- some of whom were in the CNT and some of whom were anarchists but, in fact, were mostly in the UGT and some of whom were state socialists of various kinds. Moreover, as noted above the Moorish troops under Franco arrived by sea and not by train. And, of course, no mention of the fact that the CNT-FAI in the strategically key port of Gijon was denied arms by the Socialists and Communists, which allowed the Moorish troops to disembark without real resistance.
Morrow has a lot to answer for.
It is sometimes claimed that the Friends of Durruti Group which formed during the Spanish Revolution were Marxists or represented a "break" with anarchism and a move towards Marxism. Both these assertions are false. We discuss whether the Friends of Durruti (FoD) represented a "break" with anarchism in the following section. Here we indicate that claims of the FoD being Marxists are false.
The Friends of Durruti were formed, in March 1937, by anarchist militants who had refused to submit to Communist-controlled "militarisation" of the workers' militias. During the Maydays -- the government attack against the revolution two months later -- the Friends of Durruti were notable for their calls to stand firm and crush the counter-revolution. During and after the May Days, the leaders of the CNT asserted that the FoD were Marxists (which was quite ironic as it was the CNT leaders who were acting as Marxists in Spain usually did by joining with bourgeois governments). This was a slander, pure and simple.
The best source to refute claims that the FoD were Marxists (or becoming Marxist) or that they were influenced by, or moved towards, the Bolshevik-Leninists is Agustin Guillamon's book The Friends of Durruti Group: 1937-1939. Guillamon is a Marxist (of the "left-communist" kind) and no anarchist (indeed he states that the "Spanish Revolution was the tomb of anarchism as a revolutionary theory of the proletariat." [p. 108]). That indicates that his account can be considered objective and not anarchist wishful thinking. Here we use his work to refute the claims that the FoD were Marxists. Section 9 discusses their links (or lack of them) with the Spanish Trotskyists.
So were the FoD Marxists? Guillamon makes it clear -- no, they were not. In his words, "[t]here is nothing in the Group's theoretical tenets, much less in the columns of El Amigo del Pueblo [their newspaper], or in their various manifestos and handbills to merit the description 'marxist' being applied to the Group [by the CNT leadership]. They were simply an opposition to the CNT's leadership's collaborationist policy, making their stand within the organisation and upon anarcho-syndicalist ideology." [p. 61] He stresses this in his conclusion:
"The Friends of Durruti was an affinity group, like many another existing in anarcho-syndicalist quarters. It was not influenced to any extent by the Trotskyists, nor by the POUM. Its ideology and watchwords were quintessentially in the CNT idiom: it cannot be said that they displayed a marxist ideology at any time . . . They were against the abandonment of revolutionary objectives and of anarchism's fundamental and quintessential ideological principles, which the CNT-FAI leaders had thrown over in favour of anti-fascist unity and the need to adapt to circumstances." [p. 107]
In other words, they wanted to return the CNT "to its class struggle roots." [Ibid.] Indeed, Balius (a leading member of the group and writer of its 1938 pamphlet Towards a Fresh Revolution) was moved to challenge the charges of "marxist" levelled at him:
"I will not repay defamatory comment in kind. But what I cannot keep mum about is that a legend of marxism has been woven about my person and I should like the record put straight . . . It grieves me that at the present time there is somebody who dares call me a Marxist when I could refute with unanswerable arguments those who hang such an unjustified label on me. As one who attends our union assemblies and specific gatherings, I might speak of the loss of class sensibility which I have observed on a number of occasions. I have heard it said that we should be making politics -- in as many words, comrades -- in an abstract sense, and virtually no one protested. And I, who have been aghast at countless such instances, am dubbed a marxist just because I feel, myself to be a one hundred percent revolutionary . . . On returning from exile in France in the days of Primo de Rivera . . . I have been a defender of the CNT and the FAI ever since. In spite of my paralysis, I have done time in prison and been taken in manacles to Madrid for my fervent and steadfast championship of our organisations and for fighting those who once were friends of mine Is that not enough? . . . So where is this marxism of mine? Is it because my roots are not in the factory? . . . The time has come to clarify my position. It is not good enough to say that the matter has already been agreed. The truth must shine through. As far as I am concerned, I call upon all the comrades who have used the press to hang this label upon me to spell out what makes me a marxist." [El Amigo del Pueblo, no. 4, p. 3]
As can be seen, the FoD were not Marxists. Two more questions arise. Were they a "break" with anarchism (i.e. moving towards Marxism) and were they influenced by the Spanish Trotskyists. We turn to these questions in the next two sections.
Morrow claims that the Friends of Durruti (FoD) "represented a conscious break with the anti-statism of traditional anarchism. They explicitly declared the need for democratic organs of power, juntas or soviets, in the overthrow of capitalism." [Op. Cit., p. 247] The truth of the matter is somewhat different.
Before discussing his assertion in more detail a few comments are required. Typically, in Morrow's topsy-turvy world, all anarchists like the Friends of Durruti (Morrow also includes the Libertarian Youth, the "politically awakened" CNT rank and file, local FAI groups, etc.) who remained true to anarchism and stuck to their guns (often literally) -- represented a break with anarchism and a move towards Marxism, the revolutionary vanguard party (no doubt part of the 4th International), and a fight for the "workers state." Those anarchists, on the other hand, who compromised for "anti-fascist unity" (but mainly to try and get weapons to fight Franco) are the real anarchists because "class collaboration . . . lies concealed in the heart of anarchist philosophy." [Op. Cit., p. 101]
Morrow, of course, would have had a fit if anarchists pointed to the example of the Social Democrat's who crushed the German Revolution or Stalin's Russia as examples that "rule by an elite lies concealed in the heart of Marxist philosophy." It does not spring into Morrow's mind that those anarchists he praises are the ones who show the revolutionary heart of anarchism. This can best be seen from his comments on the Friends of Durruti, who we argue were not evolving towards "Marxism" but rather were trying to push the CNT and FAI back to its pre-Civil War politics and strategy. Moreover, as we argue in section 12, anarchism has always argued for self-managed working class organisations to carry out and defend a revolution. The FoD were simply following in the tradition founded by Bakunin.
In other words, we will show that they did not "break with" anarchism -- rather they refused to compromise their anarchism in the face of "comrades" who thought winning the war meant entering the government. This is clear from their leaflets, paper and manifesto. Moreover, as will become obvious, their "break" with anarchism actually just restates pre-war CNT policy and organisation.
For example, their leaflets, in April 1937, called for the unions and municipalities to "replace the state" and for no retreat:
"We have the organs that must supplant a State in ruins. The Trade Unions and Municipalities must take charge of economic and social life." [quoted by Agustin Guillamon, Op. Cit., p. 38]
This clearly is within the CNT and anarcho-syndicalist tradition. Their manifesto, in 1938, repeated this call ("the state cannot be retained in the face of the unions"), and made three demands as part of their programme. It is worth quoting these at length:
"I - Establishment of a Revolutionary Junta or National Defence Council.
"This body will be organised as follows: members of the revolutionary Junta will be elected by democratic vote in the union organisations. Account is to be taken of the number of comrades away at the front . . . The Junta will steer clear of economic affairs, which are the exclusive preserve of the unions.
"The functions of the revolutionary Junta are as follows:
"a) The management of the war
"b) The supervision of revolutionary order
"c) International affairs
"d) Revolutionary propaganda.
"Posts to come up regularly for re-allocation so as to prevent anyone growing attached to them. And the trade union assemblies will exercise control over the Junta's activities.
"II - All economic power to the syndicates.
"Since July the unions have supplied evidence of the great capacity for constructive labour. . . It will be the unions that structure the proletarian economy.
"An Economic Council may also be set up, taking into consideration the natures of the Industrial Unions and Industrial federations, to improve on the co-ordination of economic activities.
"III - Free municipality.
[...]
"The Municipality shall take charge of those functions of society that fall outside the preserve of the unions. And since the society we are going to build shall be composed exclusively of producers, it will be the unions, no less, that will provide sustenance for the municipalities. . .
"The Municipalities will be organised at the level of local, comarcal and peninsula federations. Unions and municipalities will maintain liaison at local, comarcal and national levels." [Towards a Fresh Revolution, pp. 24-5]
This programme basically mimics the pre-war CNT policy and organisation and so cannot be considered as a "break" with anarchist or CNT politics or tradition.
Firstly, we should note that the "municipality" was a common CNT expression to describe a "commune" which was considered as "all the residents of a village or hamlet meeting in assembly (council) with full powers to administer and order local affairs, primarily production and distribution." In the cities and town the equivalent organisation was "the union" which "brings individuals together, grouping them according to the nature of their work . . . First, it groups the workers of a factory, workshop or firm together, this being the smallest cell enjoying autonomy with regard to whatever concerns it alone . . . The local unions federate with one another, forming a local federation, composed of the committee elected by the unions, and of the general assembly that, in the last analysis, holds supreme sovereignty." [Issac Puente, Libertarian Communism, p. 25 and p. 24]
In addition, the "national federations [of unions] will hold as common property the roads, railways, buildings, equipment, machinery and workshops" and the "free municipality will federate with its counterparts in other localities and with the national industrial federations." [Op. Cit., p. 29 and p. 26] Thus Puente's classic pre-war pamphlet is almost identical to points two and three of the FoD Programme.
Moreover, the "Economic Council" urged by the FoD in point two of their programme is obviously inspired by the work of Abad Diego de Santillan, particularly his book After the Revolution (El Organismo Economico de la Revolucion). Discussing the role of the "Federal Council of Economy", de Santillan says that it "receives its orientation from below and operates in accordance with the resolutions of the regional and national assemblies." [p. 86] Just as the CNT Congresses were the supreme policy-making body in the CNT itself, they envisioned a similar body emanating from the rank-and-file assemblies to make the guiding decisions for a socialised economy.
This leaves point one of their programme, the call for a "Revolutionary Junta or National Defence Council." It is here that Morrow and a host of other Marxists claim the FoD broke with anarchism towards Marxism. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Firstly, anarchists have long supported the idea of workers' councils (or soviets) as an expression of working class power to control their own lives (and so society) -- indeed, far longer than Marxists. Thus we find Bakunin arguing that the "future social organisation must be made solely from the bottom up, by the free association or federation of workers, firstly in their unions, then in the communes, regions, nations and finally in a great federation, international and universal." Anarchists "attain this goal . . . by the development and organisation, not of the political but of the social (and, by consequence, anti-political) power of the working masses." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 206 and p. 198] These councils of workers' delegates (workers' councils) would be the basis of the commune and defence of the revolution:
"the federative Alliance of all working men's associations . . . constitute the Commune . . .. Commune will be organised by the standing federation of the Barricades. . . [T]he federation of insurgent associations, communes and provinces . . . [would] organise a revolutionary force capable of defeating reaction . . . it is the very fact of the expansion and organisation of the revolution for the purpose of self-defence among the insurgent areas that will bring about the triumph of the revolution." [Op. Cit., pp. 170-1]
This perspective can be seen in the words of the German anarcho-syndicalist H. Ruediger (member of the IWA's secretariat in 1937) when he argued that for anarchists "social re-organisation, like the defence of the revolution, should be concentrated in the hands of working class organisations -- whether labour unions or new organs of spontaneous creation, such as free councils, etc., which, as an expression of the will of the workers themselves, from below up, should construct the revolutionary social community." [quoted in The May Days in Barcelona, Vernon Richards (ed.), p. 71]
Camillo Berneri sums up the anarchist perspective clearly when he wrote:
"The Marxists . . . foresee the natural disappearance of the State as a consequence of the destruction of classes by the means of 'the dictatorship of the proletariat,' that is to say State Socialism, whereas the Anarchists desire the destruction of the classes by means of a social revolution which eliminates, with the classes, the State. The Marxists, moreover, do not propose the armed conquest of the Commune by the whole proletariat, but the propose the conquest of the State by the party which imagines that it represents the proletariat. The Anarchists allow the use of direct power by the proletariat, but they understand by the organ of this power to be formed by the entire corpus of systems of communist administration -- corporate organisations [i.e. industrial unions], communal institutions, both regional and national -- freely constituted outside and in opposition to all political monopoly by parties and endeavouring to a minimum administrational centralisation." ["Dictatorship of the Proletariat and State Socialism", Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review, no. 4, p. 52]
In other words, anarchists do support democratic organs of power when they are directly democratic (i.e. self-managed). "The basic idea of Anarchism is simple," argued Voline, "no party . . . placed above or outside the labouring masses . . . ever succeeds in emancipating them . . . Effective emancipation can only be achieved by the direct, widespread, and independent action of those concerned, of the workers themselves, grouped, not under the banner of a political party . . . but in their own class organisations (productive workers' unions, factory committees, co-operatives, et cetra) on the basis of concrete action and self-government." [The Unknown Revolution, p, 197]
Anarchists oppose representative organs of power as these are governments and so based on minority power and subject to bureaucratic deformations which ensure un-accountablity from below. Anarchists argue "that, by its very nature, political power could not be exercised except by a very restricted group of men at the centre. Therefore this power -- the real power -- could not belong to the soviets. It would actually be in the hands of the party." [Voline, Op. Cit., p. 213]
Thus Morrow's argument is flawed on the basic point that he does not understand anarchist theory or the nature of an anarchist revolution (also see section 12).
Secondly, and more importantly given the Spanish context, the FoD's vision has a marked similarity to pre-Civil War CNT organisation, policy and vision. This means that the idea of a National Defence Council was not the radical break with the CNT that some claim. Before the civil war the CNT had long has its defence groups, federated at regional and national level. Historian Jerome Mintz provides a good summary:
"The policies and actions of the CNT were conducted primarily by administrative juntas, beginning with the sindicato, whose junta consisted of a president, secretary, treasurer, and council members. At each step in the confederation, a representative [sic! -- delegate] was sent to participate at the next organisational level -- from sindicato to the district to the regional confederation, then to the national confederation. In addition to the juntas, however, there were two major committee systems established as adjuncts to the juntas that had developed some autonomy: the comites pro presos, or committees for political prisoners, which worked for the release of prisoners and raised money for the relief of their families; and the comites de defensa, or defence committees, whose task was to stockpile weapons for the coming battle and to organise the shock troops who would bear the brunt of the fighting." [The Anarchists of Casas Viejas, p. 141]
Thus we see that the CNT had its "juntas" (which means council or committee and so does not imply any authoritarianism) as well as "defence committees" which were elected by democratic vote in the union organisations decades before the FoD existed. The Defence Committees (or councils) were a CNT insurgent agency in existence well before July 1936 and had, in fact, played a key role in many insurrections and strikes, including the events of July 1936. In other words, the "break" with anarchism Morrow presents was, in fact, an exact reproduction of the way the CNT had traditionally operated and acted -- it is the same program of a "workers defence council" and "union management of the economy" that the CNT had advocated prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. The only "break" that did occur post 19th of July was that of the CNT and FAI ignoring its politics and history in favour of "anti-fascist unity" and a UGT "Workers' Alliance" with all anti-fascist unions and parties (see section 20).
Moreover, the CNT insurrection of December 1933 had been co-ordinated by a National Revolutionary Committee [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, p. 235]. D.A. Santillan argued that the "local Council of Economy will assume the mission of defence and raise voluntary corps for guard duty and if need be, for combat" in the "cases of emergency or danger of a counter-revolution." [After the Revolution, p. 80] During the war itself a CNT national plenum of regions, in September 1936, called for a National Defence Council, with majority union representation and based on Regional Defence Councils. The Defence Council of Aragon, set up soon after, was based on these ideas. The need for co-ordinated revolutionary defence and attack is just common sense -- and had been reflected in CNT theory, policy and structure for decades.
An understanding of the basic ideas of anarchist theory on revolution combined with the awareness of the CNT's juntas (administrative councils or committees) had "defence committees" associated with them makes it extremely clear that rather than being a "conscious break with the anti-statism of traditional anarchism" the FoD's programme was, in fact, a conscious return to the anti-statism of traditional anarchism and the revolutionary program and vision of the pre-Civil War CNT.
This is confirmed if we look at the activities of the CNT in Aragon where they formed the "Defence Council of Aragon" in September 1936. In the words of historian Antony Beevor, "[i]n late September delegates from the Aragonese collectives attended a conference at Bujaraloz, near where Durruti's column was based. They decided to establish a Defence Council of Aragon, and elected as president Joaquin Ascaso." [Op. Cit., p. 96] In February 1937, the first congress of the regional federation of collectives was held at Caspe to co-ordinate the activities of the collectives -- an obvious example of a regional economic council desired by the FoD. Morrow does mention the Council of Aragon -- "the anarchist-controlled Council for the Defence of Aragon" [Op. Cit., p. 111] -- however, he strangely fails to relate this fact to anarchist politics. After all, in Aragon the CNT-FAI remained true to anarchism, created a defence council and a federation of collectives. If Morrow had discussed the events in Aragon he would have had to draw the conclusion that the FoD were not a "conscious break with the traditional anti-statism of anarchism" but rather were an expression of it.
This can be seen from the comments made after the end of the war by the Franco-Spanish Group of The Friends of Durruti. They clearly argued for a return to the principles of anarchism and the pre-war CNT. They argued not only for workers' self-organisation and self-management as the basis of the revolution but also to the pre-war CNT idea of a workers' alliance from the bottom up rather than a UGT-style one at the top (see section 5). In their words:
"A revolution requires the absolute domination of the workers' organisations as was the case in July, 1936, when the CNT-FAI were masters . . . We incline to the view that it is necessary to form a Revolutionary Alliance; a Workers' Front; where no one would be allowed to enter and take their place except on a revolutionary basis . . . " ["The Friends of Durruti Accuse", Class War on the Home Front, Wildcat Group (ed.), p. 34]
As can be seen, rather than a "revolutionary government" the FoD were consistently arguing for a federation of workers' associations as the basis of the revolution. In this they were loyally following Bakunin's basic arguments and the ideas of anarchism. Rather than the FoD breaking with anarchism, it is clear that it was the leading committees of the CNT and FAI which actually broke with the politics of anarchism and the tactics, ideas and ideals of the CNT.
Lastly there are the words of Jaime Balius, one of the FoD's main activists, who states in 1976 that:
"We did not support the formation of Soviets; there were no grounds in Spain for calling for such. We stood for 'all power to the trade unions'. In no way were we politically orientated . . . Ours was solely an attempt to save the revolution; at the historical level it can be compared to Kronstadt because if there the sailors and workers called for 'all power to the Soviets', we were calling for all power to the unions." [quoted by Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain, p. 381]
"Political" here meaning "state-political" -- a common anarchist use of the word. According to Fraser, the "proposed revolutionary junta was to be composed of combatants from the barricades." [Ibid.] This echoes Bakunin's comment that the "Commune will be organised by the standing federation of the Barricades and by the creation of a Revolutionary Communal Council composed of one or two delegates from each barricade . . . vested with plenary but accountable and removable mandates." [Op. Cit., pp. 170-1]
As can be seen, rather than calling for power to a party or looking to form a government (i.e. being "politically orientated") the FoD were calling for "all power to the unions." This meant, in the context of the CNT, all power to the union assemblies in the workplace. Decision making would flow from the bottom upwards rather than being delegated to a "revolutionary" government as in Trotskyism. To stress the point, the FoD did not represent a "break" with anarchism or the CNT tradition. To claim otherwise means to misunderstand anarchist politics and CNT history.
Our analysis, we must note, also makes a mockery of Guillamon's claim that because the FoD thought that libertarian communism had to be "impose[d]" and "defended by force of arms" their position represented an "evolution within anarchist thought processes." [Op. Cit., p. 95] As has been made clear above, from Bakunin onwards revolutionary anarchism has been aware of the need for an insurrection to create an anarchist society by destroying both the state and capitalism (i.e. to "impose" a free society upon those who wish hierarchy to continue and are in a position of power) and for that revolution to be defended against attempts to defeat it. Similarly, his claim that the FoD's "revolutionary junta" was the equivalent of what "others call the vanguard or the revolutionary party" cannot be defended given our discussion above -- it is clear that the junta was not seen as a form of delegated power by rather as a means of defending the revolution like the CNT's defence committees and under the direct control of the union assemblies.
It may be argued that the FoD did not actually mean this sort of structure. Indeed, their manifesto states that they are "introducing a slight variation in anarchism into our program. The establishment of a Revolutionary Junta." Surely this implies that they saw themselves as having moved away from anarchism and CNT policy? As can be seen from Balius' comments during and after the revolution, the FoD were arguing for "all power to the unions" and stating that "apolitical anarchism had failed." However, "apolitical" anarchism came about post-July 19th when the CNT-FAI (ignoring anarchist theory and CNT policy and history) ignored the state machine rather than destroying it and supplanting it with libertarian organs of self-management. The social revolution that spontaneously occurred after July 19th was essentially economic and social (i.e. "apolitical") and not "anti-political" (i.e. the destruction of the state machine). Such a revolution would soon come to grief on the shores of the (revitalised) state machine -- as the FoD correctly argued had happened.
To state that they had introduced a variation into their anarchism makes sense post-July 1936. The "apolitical" line of the CNT-FAI had obviously failed and a new departure was required. While it is clear that the FoD's "new" position was nothing of the kind, it was elemental anarchist principles, it was "new" in respect to the policy the CNT ("anarchism") had conducted during the Civil War -- a policy they justified by selective use of anarchist theory and principles. In the face of this, the FoD could claim they were presenting a new variation in spite of its obvious similarities to pre-war CNT policies and anarchist theory. Thus the claim that the FoD saw their ideas as some sort of departure from traditional anarchism cannot be maintained, given the obvious links this "new" idea had with the past policies and structure of the CNT. As Guillamon makes it clear, the FoD made "their stand within the organisation and upon anarcho-syndicalist ideology" and "[a]t all times the Group articulated an anarcho-syndicalist ideology, although it also voiced radical criticism of the CNT and FAI leadership. But it is a huge leap from that to claiming that the Group espoused marxist positions." [Op. Cit., p. 61 and p. 95]
One last comment. Morrow states that the "CNT leadership . . . expelled the Friends of Durruti" [Op. Cit., p. 189] This is not true. The CNT leadership did try to expel the FoD. However, as Balius points out, the "higher committees order[ed] our expulsion, but this was rejected by the rank and file in the trade union assemblies and at a plenum of FAI groups held in the Casa CNT-FAI." [quoted by Agustin Guillamon, Op. Cit., p. 73] Thus the CNT leadership could never get their desire ratified by any assembly of unions or FAI groups. Unfortunately, Morrow gets his facts wrong (and also presents a somewhat false impression of the relationship of the CNT leadership and the rank and file).
Morrow implies that the Bolshevik-Leninists "established close contacts with the anarchist workers, especially the 'Friends of Durruti'" [Op. Cit., p. 139] The truth, as usual, is somewhat different.
To prove this we must again turn to Guillamon's work in which he dedicates a chapter to this issue. He brings this chapter by stating:
"It requires only a cursory perusal of El Amigo del Pueblo or Balius's statements to establish that the Friends of Durruti were never marxists, nor influenced at all by the Trotskyists or the Bolshevik-Leninist Section. But there is a school of historians determined to maintain the opposite and hence the necessity for this chapter." [Op. Cit., p. 94]
He stresses that the FoD "were not in any way beholden to Spanish Trotskyism is transparent from several documents" and notes that while the POUM and Trotskyists displayed "an interest" in "bringing the Friends of Durruti under their influence" this was "something in which they never succeeded." [Op. Cit., p. 96 and p. 110]
Pre-May, 1937, Balius himself states that the FoD "had no contact with the POUM, nor with the Trotskyists." [Op. Cit., p. 104] Post-May, this had not changed as witness E. Wolf letter to Trotsky in July 1937 which stated that it "will be impossible to achieve any collaboration with them . . . Neither the POUMists nor the Friends would agree to the meeting [to discuss joint action]." [Op. Cit., pp. 97-8]
In other words, the Friends of Durruti did not establish "close contacts" with the Bolshevik-Leninists after the May Days of 1937. While the Bolshevik-Leninists may have wished for such contacts, the FoD did not (they probably remembered their fellow anarchists and workers imprisoned and murdered when Trotsky was in power in Russia). They were, of course, contacts of a limited kind but no influence or significant co-operation. Little wonder Balius stated in 1946 that the "alleged influence of the POUM or the Trotskyists upon us is untrue." [quoted, Op. Cit., p. 104]
It is hardly surprising that the FoD were not influenced by Trotskyism. After all, they were well aware of the policies Trotsky introduced when he was in power. Moreover, the program of the Bolshevik-Leninists was similar in rhetoric to the anarchist vision -- they differed on the question of whether they actually meant "all power to the working class" or not (see section 12 and 13). And, of course, the Trotskyists activities during the May Days amounted to little more that demanding that the workers' do what they were already doing (as can be seen from the leaflet they produced -- as George Orwell noted, "it merely demanded what was happening already" [Homage to Catalonia, p. 221]). As usual, the "vanguard of the proletariat" were trying to catch up with the proletariat.
In theory and practice the FoD were miles ahead of the Bolshevik-Leninists -- as to be expected, as the FoD were anarchists.
Morrow states that the FoD's "slogans included the essential points of a revolutionary program: all power to the working class, and democratic organs of the workers, peasants and combatants, as the expression of the workers' power." [Op. Cit., p. 133] It is useful to compare Leninism to these points to see if that provides a revolutionary program.
Firstly, as we argue in more detail in section 11, Trotsky abolished the democratic organs of the Red Army. Lenin's rule also saw the elimination of the factory committee movement and its replacement with one-man management appointed from above (see section 17 and Maurice Brinton's The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control for details). Both these events occurred before the start of the Russian Civil War in May 1918. Moreover, neither Lenin nor Trotsky considered workers' self-management of production as a key aspects of socialism. On this level, Leninism in power did not constitute a "revolutionary program."
Secondly, Leninism does not call for "all power to the working class" or even "workers' power" to manage their own affairs. To quote Trotsky, in an article written in 1937, "the proletariat can take power only through its vanguard." The working classes' role is one of supporting the party:
"Without the confidence of the class in the vanguard, without support of the vanguard by the class, there can be no talk of the conquest of power. In this sense the proletarian revolution and dictatorship are the work of the whole class, but only under the leadership of the vanguard." ["Stalinism and Bolshevism", Writings 1936-7, p. 426
Thus, rather than the working class as a whole seizing power, it is the "vanguard" which takes power -- "a revolutionary party, even after seizing power . . . is still by no means the sovereign ruler of society." [Op. Cit., p. 424] So much for "workers' power" -- unless you equate that with the "power" to give your power, your control over your own affairs, to a minority who claim to represent you. Indeed, Trotsky even attacks the idea that workers' can achieve power directly via organs of self-management like workers' councils (or soviets):
"Those who propose the abstraction of the Soviets from the party dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the party leadership were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat." [Op. Cit., p. 430]
In other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat is, in fact, expressed by "the party dictatorship." In this Trotsky follows Lenin who asserted that:
"The very presentation of the question -- 'dictatorship of the Party or dictatorship of the class, dictatorship (Party) of the leaders or dictatorship (Party) of the masses?' -- is evidence of the most incredible and hopeless confusion of mind . . . [because] classes are usually . . . led by political parties. . . " [Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, pp. 25-6]
As has been made clear above, the FoD being anarchists aimed for a society of generalised self-management, a system in which working people directly controlled their own affairs and so society. As these words by Lenin and Trotsky indicate they did not aim for such a society, a society based on "all power to the working class." Rather, they aimed for a society in which the workers would delegate their power into the hands of a few, the revolutionary party, who would exercise power on their behalf. The FoD meant exactly what they said when they argued for "all power to the working class" -- they did not mean this as a euphemism for party rule. In this they followed Bakunin:
"[T]he federated Alliance of all labour associations . . . will constitute the Commune . . . there will be a federation of the standing barricades and a Revolutionary Communal Council will operate on the basis of one or two delegates from each barricade . . . these deputies being invested with binding mandates and accountable and revocable at all times. . . An appeal will be issued to all provinces, communes and associations inviting them to follow the example set . . . [and] to reorganise along revolutionary lines . . . and to then delegate deputies to an agreed place of assembly (all of those deputies invested with binding mandates and accountable and subject to recall), in order to found the federation of insurgent associations, communes and provinces . . . Thus it is through the very act of extrapolation and organisation of the Revolution with an eye to the mutual defences of insurgent areas that the . . . Revolution, founded upon . . . the ruins of States, will emerge triumphant. . .
"Since it is the people which must make the revolution everywhere, and since the ultimate direction of it must at all times be vested in the people organised into a free federation of agricultural and industrial organisations . . . being organised from the bottom up through revolutionary delegation . . ." [No God, No Masters, vol. 1, pp. 155-6]
And:
"Not even as revolutionary transition will we countenance national Conventions, nor Constituent Assemblies, nor provisional governments, nor so-called revolutionary dictatorships: because we are persuaded that revolution s sincere, honest and real only among the masses and that, whenever it is concentrated in the hands of a few governing individuals, it inevitably and immediately turns into reaction." [Op. Cit., p. 160]
As can be seen, Bakunin's vision is precisely, to use Morrow' words, "all power to the working class, and democratic organs of the workers, peasants and combatants, as the expression of the workers' power." Thus the Friends of Durruti's program is not a "break" with anarchism (as we discussed in more detail in section 8) but rather in the tradition started by Bakunin -- in other words, an anarchist program. It is Leninism, as can be seen, which rejects this "revolutionary program" in favour of all power to the representatives of the working class (i.e. party) which it confuses with the working class as a whole.
Given that Morrow asserts that "all power to the working class" was an "essential" point of "a revolutionary program" we can only conclude that Trotskyism does not provide a revolutionary program -- rather it provides a program based, at best, on representative government in which the workers' delegate their power to a minority or, at worse, on party dictatorship over the working class (the experience of Bolshevik Russia would suggest the former quickly becomes the latter, and is justified by Bolshevik ideology).
By his own arguments, here as in so many other cases, Morrow indicates that Trotskyism is not a revolutionary movement or theory.
Morrow denounces the Stalinist militarisation of the militias (their "campaign for wiping out the internal democratic life of the militias") as follows:
"The Stalinists early sought to set an 'example' by handing their militias over to government control, helping to institute the salute, supremacy of officers behind the lines, etc. . .
"The example was wasted on the CNT masses . . . The POUM reprinted for distribution in the militias the original Red Army Manual of Trotsky, providing for a democratic internal regime and political life in the army." [Op. Cit., p. 126]
Morrow states that he supported the "democratic election of soldiers' committees in each unit, centralised in a national election of soldiers' delegates to a national council." Moreover, he attacks the POUM leadership because it "forbade election of soldiers' committees" and argued that the "simple, concrete slogan of elected soldier's committees was the only road for securing proletariat control of the army." Thus the POUM ensured its "ten thousand militiamen were controlled bureaucratically by officials appointed by the Central Committee of the party, election of soldiers' committees being expressly forbidden." [Op. Cit., p. 127, p. 128 and pp. 136-7]
Again, Morrow is correct. A revolutionary working class militia does require self-management, the election of delegates, soldiers' councils and so on. Bakunin, for example, argued that the fighters on the barricades would take a role in determining the development of the revolution as the "Commune will be organised by the standing federation of the Barricades . . . composed of one or two delegates from each barricade . . . vested with plenary but accountable and removable mandates." This would complement "the federative Alliance of all working men's [and women's] associations . . . which will constitute the Commune." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, pp. 170-1] That is exactly why the CNT militia organised in this fashion (and, we must note, they were only applying the organisational principles of the CNT and FAI -- i.e. anarchism -- to the militias). The militia columns were organised in a libertarian fashion from the bottom up:
"The establishment of war committees is acceptable to all confederal militias. We start from the individual and form groups of ten, which come to accommodations among themselves for small-scale operations. Ten such groups together make up one centuria, which appoints a delegate to represent it. Thirty centurias make up one column, which is directed by a war committee, on which the delegates from the centurias have their say. . . although every column retains its freedom of action, we arrive at co-ordination of forces, which is not the same thing as unity of command." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, pp. 256-7]
In other words, Morrow is arguing for an anarchist solution to the problem of defending the revolution and organising those who were fighting fascism. We say anarchist for good reason. What is ironic about Morrow's comments and description of "workers' control of the army" is that these features were exactly those eliminated by Trotsky when he created the Red Army in 1918! Indeed, Trotsky acted in exactly the same way as Morrow attacks the Stalinists for acting (and they used many of the same arguments as Trotsky did to justify it).
As Maurice Brinton correctly summarises:
"Trotsky, appointed Commissar of Military Affairs after Brest-Litovsk, had rapidly been reorganising the Red Army. The death penalty for disobedience under fire had been restored. So, more gradually, had saluting, special forms of address, separate living quarters and other privileges for officers. Democratic forms of organisation, including the election of officers, had been quickly dispensed with." [The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. 37]
He notes that "[f]or years, Trotskyist literature has denounced these reactionary facets of the Red Army as examples of what happened to it 'under Stalinism.'" [Op. Cit., p. 37f] This claim was, amazingly enough, also made by Trotsky himself. In 1935 he re-wrote history by arguing that "[i]n the fire of the cruel struggle [of the Civil War], there could not be even a question of a privileged position for officers: the very word was scrubbed out of the vocabulary." Only "after the victories had been won and the passage made to a peaceful situation" did "the military apparatus" try to "become the most influential and privileged part of the whole bureaucratic apparatus" with "the Stalinist bureaucracy . . . gradually over the succeeding ten to twelve years" ensuring for them "a superior position" and giving them "ranks and decorations." ["How Did Stalin Defeat the Opposition?," Writings, 1935-36, pp. 175-6]
In fact, "ranks and decorations" and "superior" positions were introduced by Trotsky before the outbreak of the Civil War in May 1918. Having been responsible for such developments you would think he would remember them!
On March 28th, 1918, Trotsky gave a report to the Moscow City Conference of the Communist Party. In this report he stated that "the principle of election is politically purposeless and technically inexpedient, and it has been, in practice, abolished by decree" and that the Bolsheviks "fac[ed] the task of creating a regular Army." Why the change? Simply because the Bolshevik Party held power ("political power is in the hands of the same working class from whose ranks the Army is recruited"). ["Work, Discipline, Order, How the Revolution Armed, vol. I, pp. 46-7] Of course, power was actually held by the Bolshevik party, not the working class, but never fear:
"Once we have established the Soviet regime, that is a system under which the government is headed by persons who have been directly elected by the Soviets of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies, there can be no antagonism between the government and the mass of the workers, just as there is no antagonism between the administration of the union and the general assembly of its members, and, therefore, there cannot be any grounds for fearing the appointment of members of the commanding staff by the organs of the Soviet Power." ["Work, Discipline, Order," Op. Cit., vol. 1, p. 47]
Of course, most workers' are well aware that the administration of a trade union usually works against them during periods of struggle. Indeed, so are most Trotskyists as they often denounce the betrayals by that administration. Thus Trotsky's own analogy indicates the fallacy of his argument. Elected officials do not necessary reflect the interests of those who elected them. That is why anarchists have always supported delegation rather than representation combined with decentralisation, strict accountability and the power of instant recall. In a highly centralised system (as created by the Bolsheviks and as exists in most social democratic trade unions) the ability to recall an administration is difficult as it requires the agreement of all the people. Thus there are quite a few grounds for fearing the appointment of commanders by the government -- no matter which party makes it up.
If, as Morrow argues, the "simple, concrete slogan of elected soldier's committees was the only road for securing proletariat control of the army" then Trotsky's regime in the Red Army ensured the defeat of proletarian control of that organisation. The question Morrow raises of who would control the army, the working class or the bourgeois failed to realise the real question -- who was to control the army, the working class, the bourgeois or the state bureaucracy. Trotsky ensured that it would be the latter -- indeed, the repression of strikes and other working class protest by the Red Army and Cheka under Lenin and Trotsky shows that this was the case (see section H.6.3).
Hence Morrow's own arguments indicate the anti-revolutionary nature of Trotskyism -- unless, of course, we decide to look only at what people say and not what they do.
Of course some Trotskyists know what Trotsky actually did when he held power and try and present apologetics for his obvious destruction of soldiers' democracy. One argues that the "Red Army, more than any other institution of the civil war years, embodied the contradiction between the political consciousness and circumstantial coercion. On the one hand the creation of a Red Army was a retreat: it was a conscripted not a voluntary army; officers were appointed not elected . . . But the Red Army was also filled with a magnificent socialist consciousness." [John Rees, "In Defence of October", International Socialism, no. 52, pp. 3-82, p. 46]
This argument is somewhat weak for two reasons.
Firstly, the regressive features of the Red Army appeared before the start of the Civil War. It was a political decision to organise in this way, a decision not justified at the time in terms of circumstantial necessity. Indeed, far from it (like most of the other Bolshevik policies of the period). Rather it was justified under the rather dubious rationale that workers did not need to fear the actions of a workers' state. Circumstances were not mentioned at all nor was the move considered as a retreat or as a defeat. It was not even considered as a matter of principle.
This perspective was reiterated by Trotsky after the end of the Civil War. Writing in 1922, he argued that:
"There was and could be no question of controlling troops by means of elected committees and commanders who were subordinate to these committees and might be replaced at any moment . . . [The old army] had carried out a social revolution within itself, casting aside the commanders from the landlord and bourgeois classes and establishing organs of revolutionary self-government, in the shape of the Soviets of Soldiers' Deputies. These organisational and political measures were correct and necessary from the standpoint of breaking up the old army. But a new army capable of fighting could certainly not grow directly out of them . . . The attempt made to apply our old organisational methods to the building of a Red Army threatened to undermine it from the very outset . . . the system of election could in no way secure competent, suitable and authoritative commanders for the revolutionary army. The Red Army was built from above, in accordance with the principles of the dictatorship of the working class. Commanders were selected and tested by the organs of the Soviet power and the Communist Party. Election of commanders by the units themselves -- which were politically ill-educated, being composed of recently mobilised young peasants -- would inevitably have been transformed into a game of chance, and would often, in fact, have created favourable circumstances for the machinations of various intriguers and adventurers. Similarly, the revolutionary army, as an army for action and not as an arena of propaganda, was incompatible with a regime of elected committees, which in fact could not but destroy all centralised control." ["The Path of the Red Army", How the Revolution Armed, vol. I, pp. 7-8]
If a "circumstantial" factor exists in this rationale, it is the claim that the soldiers were "politically ill-educated." However, every mass movement or revolution starts with those involved being "politically ill-educated." The very process of struggle educates them politically. A key part of this radicalisation is practising self-management and self-organisation -- in other words, in participating in the decision making process of the struggle, by discussing ideas and actions, by hearing other viewpoints, electing and mandating delegates. To remove this ensures that those involved remain "politically ill-educated" and, ultimately, incapable of self-government. It also contains the rationale for continuing party dictatorship:
"If some people . . . have assumed the right to violate everybody's freedom on the pretext of preparing the triumph of freedom, they will always find that the people are not yet sufficiently mature, that the dangers of reaction are ever-present, that the education of the people has not yet been completed. And with these excuses they will seek to perpetuate their own power." [Errico Malatesta, Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 52]
As can be seen from their arguments for party dictatorship, this was a conclusion which Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Bolsheviks did draw (see, for example, section 12).
In addition, Trotsky's rationale refutes any claim that Bolshevism is somehow "fundamentally" democratic. The ramifications of it were felt everywhere in the soviet system as the Bolsheviks ignored the "wrong" democratic decisions made by the working masses and replaced their democratic organisations with appointees from above. Indeed, Trotsky admits that the "Red Army was built from above, in accordance with the principles of the dictatorship of the working class." ["The Path of the Red Army", How the Revolution Armed, vol. I, p. 8] Which means, to state the obvious, appointment from above, the dismantling of self-government, and so on are "in accordance with the principles" of Trotskyism. These comments were not made in the heat of the civil war, but afterward during peacetime. Notice Trotsky admits that a "social revolution" had swept through the Tsarist army. His actions, he also admits, reversed that revolution and replaced its organs of "self-government" with ones identical to the old regime. When that happens it is usually called by its true name, namely counter-revolution.
For a Trotskyist, therefore, to present themselves as a supporter of self-managed militias is the height of hypocrisy. The Stalinists repeated the same arguments used by Trotsky and acted in exactly the same way in their campaign against the CNT and POUM militias. Certain acts have certain ramifications, no matter who does them or under what government. In other words, abolishing democracy in the army will generate autocratic tendencies which will undermine socialistic ones no matter who does it. The same means cannot be used to serve different ends as there is an intrinsic relationship between the instruments used and the results obtained -- that is why the bourgeoisie do not encourage democracy in the army or the workplace! Just as the capitalist workplace is organised to produce proletarians and capital along with cloth and steel, the capitalist army is organised to protect and reinforce minority power. The army and the capitalist workplace are not simply means or neutral instruments. Rather they are social structures which generate, reinforce and protect specific social relations. This is what the Russian masses instinctively realised and conducted a social-revolution in both the army and workplace to transform these structures into ones which would enhance rather than crush freedom and working class autonomy. The Bolsheviks reversed these movements in favour of structures which reproduced capitalist social relationships and justified it in terms of "socialism." Unfortunately, capitalist means and organisations would only generate capitalist ends.
It was for these reasons that the CNT and its militias were organised from the bottom up in a self-managed way. It was the only way socialists and a socialist society could be created -- that is why anarchists are anarchists, we recognise that a socialist (i.e. libertarian) society cannot be created by authoritarian organisations. As the justly famous Sonvillier Circular argued "[h]ow could one expect an egalitarian society to emerge out of an authoritarian organisation? It is impossible." [quoted by Brian Morris, Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom, p. 61] Just as the capitalist state cannot be utilised by the working class for its own ends, capitalist/statist organisational principles such as appointment, autocratic management, centralisation and delegation of power and so on cannot be utilised for social liberation. They are not designed to be used for that purpose (and, indeed, they were developed in the first place to stop it and enforce minority rule!).
As such, Kropotkin was right to argue that it was "a tragic error" to think that "the old organisation, slowly developed in the course of history to crush freedom, to crush the individual, to establish oppression on a legal basis, to create monopolists, to lead minds astray by accustoming them to servitude -- will lend itself perfectly to new functions: that it will become the instrument, the framework, to germinate a new life, to establish freedom and equality on economic foundations, to eradicate monopolies, to awaken society and march to the conquest of a future of freedom and equality!" [Modern Science and Anarchy, p. 275]
In addition, to abolish democracy on the pretext that people are not ready for it ensures that it will never exist. Anarchists, in contrast, argue that "[o]nly freedom or the struggle for freedom can be the school for freedom." [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 59]
Secondly, how can a "socialist consciousness" be encouraged, or continue to exist, without socialist institutions to express it? Such a position is idealistic nonsense, expressing the wishful notion that the social relationships people experiences does not impact on those involved. In effect, Rees is arguing that as long as the leaders have the "right ideas" it does not matter how an organisation is structured. However, how people develop, the ideas they have in their heads, are influenced by the relations they create with each other -- autocratic organisations do not encourage self-management or socialism, they produce bureaucrats and subjects.
An autocratic organisation cannot encourage a socialist consciousness by its institutional life, only in spite of it. For example, the capitalist workplace encourages a spirit of revolt and solidarity in those subject to its hierarchical management and this is expressed in direct action -- by resisting the authority of the boss. It only generates a socialist perspective via resistance to it. Similarly with the Red Army. Education programs to encourage reading and writing does not generate socialists, it generates soldiers who are literate. If these soldiers do not have the institutional means to manage their own affairs, a forum to discuss political and social issues, then they remain order takers and any socialist conscious will wither and die.
The Red Army was based on the fallacy that the structure of an organisation is unimportant and it is the politics of those in charge that matter (Marxists make a similar claim for the state, so we should not be too surprised). However, it is no co-incidence that bourgeois structures are always hierarchical -- self-management is a politically educational experience which erodes the power of those in charge and transforms those who do it. It is to stop this development, to protect the power of the ruling few, that the bourgeois always turn to centralised, hierarchical structures -- they reinforce elite rule. You cannot use the same form of organisation and expect different results -- they are designed that way for a reason! To twitter on about the Red Army being "filled with a magnificent socialist consciousness" while justifying the elimination of the only means by which that consciousness could survive, prosper and grow indicates a complete lack of socialist politics and any understanding of materialist philosophy.
Moreover, one of the basic principles of the anarchist militia was equality between all members. Delegates received the same pay, ate the same food, wore the same clothes as the rest of the unit. Not so in the Red Army. Trotsky thought, when he was in charge of it, that inequality was "in some cases . . . quite explicable and unavoidable" and that "[e]very Red Army warrior fully accepts that the commander of his unit should enjoy certain privileges as regards lodging, means of transport and even uniform." ["More Equality!", How the Revolution Armed, vol II, p. 116]
Of course, Trotsky would think that, being the head commander of the Army. Unfortunately, because soldier democracy had been abolished by decree, we have no idea whether the rank and file of the Red Army agreed with him. For Trotsky, privilege "is, in itself, in certain cases, inevitable" but "[o]stentatious indulgence in privilege is not just evil, it is a crime." Hence his desire for "more" equality rather than equality -- to aim for "eliminating the most abnormal [!] phenomena, softening [!] the inequality that exists" rather than abolish it as they did in the CNT militias. [Op. Cit., p. 117 and p. 119]
But, of course, such inequalities that existed in the Red Army are to be expected in an autocratically run organisation. The inequality inherent in hierarchy, the inequality in power between the order giver and order taker, will, sooner or later, be reflected in material inequality. As happened in the Red Army (and all across the "workers' state"). All Trotsky wanted was for those in power to be respectable in their privilege rather than showing it off. The anarchist militias did not have this problem because being libertarian, delegates were subject to recall and power rested with the rank and file, not an elected government.
As another irony of history, Morrow quotes a Bolshevik-Leninist leaflet (which "points the road") as demanding "[e]qual pay for officers and soldiers." [Op. Cit., p. 191] Obviously these good Trotskyists had no idea what their hero actually wrote on this subject or did when in power. We have to wonder how long their egalitarian demands would have survived once they had acquired power -- if the experience of Trotsky in power is anything to go by, not very long.
Trotsky did not consider how the abolition of democracy and its replacement with an autocratic system would effect the morale or consciousness of the soldiers subject to it. He argued that in the Red Army "the best soldier does not mean at all the most submissive and uncomplaining." Rather, "the best soldier will nearly always be sharper, more observant and critical than the others. . . by his critical comments, based on facts accessible to all, he will pretty often undermine the prestige of the commanders and commissars in the eyes of the mass of the soldiers." However, not having a democratic army the soldiers could hardly express their opinion other than rebellion or by indiscipline. Trotsky, however, adds a comment that makes his praise of critical soldiers seem less than sincere. He states that "counter-revolutionary elements, agents of the enemy, make conscious and skilful use of the circumstances I have mentioned [presumably excessive privilege rather than critical soldiers, but who can tell] in order to stir up discontent and intensify antagonism between rank and file and the commanding personnel." [Op. Cit., p. 118] The question, of course, arises of who can tell the difference between a critical soldier and a "counter-revolutionary element"? Without a democratic organisation, soldier are dependent (as in any other hierarchy) on the power of the commanders, commissars and, in the Red Army, the Bolshevik Secret Police (the Cheka). In other words, members of the very class of autocrats their comments are directed against.
Without democratic organisation, the Red Army could never be a means for creating a socialist society, only a means of reproducing autocratic organisation. The influence of the autocratic organisation created by Trotsky had a massive impact on the development of the Soviet State. According to Trotsky himself:
"The demobilisation of the Red Army of five million played no small role in the formation of the bureaucracy. The victorious commanders assumed leading posts in the local Soviets, in economy, in education, and they persistently introduced everywhere that regime which had ensured success in the civil war. Thus on all sides the masses were pushed away gradually from actual participation in the leadership of the country." [The Revolution Betrayed, p. 90]
Obviously Trotsky had forgotten who created the regime in the Red Army in the first place! He also seems to have forgotten that after militarising the Red Army, he turned his power to militarising workers (starting with the railway workers). He also forgets that Lenin had been arguing that workers' must "unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of labour" from April 1918 along with granting "individual executives dictatorial power (or 'unlimited' powers)" and that "the appointment of individuals, dictators with unlimited powers" was, in fact, "in general compatible with the fundamental principles of Soviet government" simply because "the history of revolutionary movements" had "shown" that "the dictatorship of individuals was very often the expression, the vehicle, the channel of the dictatorship of revolutionary classes." He notes that "[u]ndoubtably, the dictatorship of individuals was compatible with bourgeois democracy." ["The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government", Collected Works, vol. 27, pp. 267-9]
In other words, Lenin urged the creation of, and implemented, bourgeois forms of workplace management based on the appointment of managers from above. To indicate that this was not in contradiction with Soviet principles, he points to the example of bourgeois revolutions! As if bourgeois methods do not reflect bourgeois interests and goals. In addition, these "dictators" were given the same autocratic powers Trotsky claimed the demobilisation of the Red Army four years later had "persistently introduced everywhere." Yes, "on all sides the masses were pushed away gradually from actual participation in the leadership of the country" but the process had started immediately after the October Revolution and was urged and organised by Lenin and Trotsky before the Civil War had started.
Lenin's support for appointment of ("dictatorial") managers from above makes Trotsky's 1922 comment that the "Red Army was built from above, in accordance with the principles of the dictatorship of the working class" take on a new light. ["The Path of the Red Army", How the Revolution Armed, vol. I, p. 8] After all, Lenin argued for an economy system built from above via the appointment of managers before the start of the Civil War. The Red Army was created from above via the appointment of officers before the start of the Civil War. Things had certainly changed since Lenin had argued in The State and Revolution that "[a]ll officials, without exception, [would be] elected and subject to recall at any time." This would "serve as the bridge between capitalism and socialism." [The Essential Lenin, p. 302] One major difference, given Trotsky's rationales, seems to be that the Bolsheviks were now in power and so election and recall without exception could be forgotten and replaced by appointment.
In summary, Trotsky's argument against functional democracy in the Red Army could, and was, used to justify the suppression of any democratic decision or organisation of the working class the Bolshevik government disapproved of. He used the same argument, for example, to justify the undermining of the Factory Committee movement and the struggle for workers' control in favour of one-man management -- the form of management in the workplace was irrelevant as the workers' were now citizens of a workers' state and under a workers' government (see section 17). Needless to say, a state which eliminates functional democracy in the grassroots will not stay democratic for long (and to remain the sovereign power in society, any state will have to eliminate it or, at the very least, bring it under central control -- as institutionalised in the USSR constitution of 1918).
Instead of seeing socialism as a product of free association, of working class self-organisation from the bottom up by self-managed organisations, Trotsky saw it as a centralised, top-down system. Of course, being a democrat of sorts he saw the Bolshevik Government as being elected by the mass of the population (or, more correctly, he saw it being elected by the national congress of soviets). However, his vision of centralisation of power provided the rationale for destroying functional democracy in the grass-roots -- and without healthy roots, any plant will wither and die. Little wonder, then, that the Bolshevik experiment proved such a disaster -- yes, the civil war did not help but the logic of Bolshevism has started to undermine working class self-management before is started.
Thus Trotsky's argument that the democratic nature of a workers' army or militia is irrelevant because a "workers' state" exists is flawed on many different levels. And the experience of Trotsky in power indicates well the poverty of Trotskyism and Morrow's criticism of the CNT -- his suggestion for a self-managed militia is pure anarchism with nothing to do with Leninism and the experience of Bolshevism in power.
Equally ironic as Morrow's comments concerning democratic militias (see last section) is his argument that the revolution needed to "give the factory committees, militia committees, peasant committees, a democratic character, by having them elected by all workers in each unit; to bring together these elected delegates in village, city, regional councils . . . [and] a national congress." [Op. Cit., p. 100]
Such a position is correct, such developments were required to ensure the success of the revolution. However, it is somewhat ironic that a Trotskyist would present them as somehow being opposed to anarchism when, in fact, they are pure anarchism. Indeed, anarchists were arguing in favour of workers' councils more than five decades before Lenin discovered the importance of the Russian Soviets in 1917. Moreover, as we will indicate, what is even more ironic is the fact that Trotskyism does not actually see these organs as an expression of working class self-management and power but rather as a means of the party to take power. In addition, we must also note that it was Lenin and Trotsky who helped undermine the Russian workers' factory committees, militia committees and so on in favour of party rule. We will discuss each of these ironies in turn.
Firstly, as noted, such Morrow's stated position is exactly what Bakunin and the anarchist movement had been arguing since the 1860s. To quote Bakunin:
"the federative alliance of all working men's associations . . . constitute the Commune . . . all provinces, communes and associations . . . by first reorganising on revolutionary lines . . . [will] constitute the federation of insurgent associations, communes and provinces . . . [and] organise a revolutionary force capable defeating reaction . . . [and for] self-defence . . . [The] revolution everywhere must be created by the people, and supreme control must always belong to the people organised into a free federation of agricultural and industrial associations . . . organised from the bottom upwards by means of revolutionary delegation. . . " [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 170-2]
"The future social organisation must be made solely from the bottom up, by the free association or federation of workers, firstly in their unions, then in the communes, regions, nations and finally in a great federation, international and universal." [Op. Cit., p. 206]
Here is Kropotkin presenting the same vision:
"what means can the State provide to abolish this [class] monopoly that the working class could not find in its own strength and groups? . . . what advantages could the State provide for abolishing these same privileges? Could its governmental machine, developed for the creation and upholding of these privileges, now be used to abolish them? Would not the new function require new organs? And these new organs would they not have to be created by the workers themselves, in their unions, their federations, completely outside the State? . . . independent Communes for the territorial groupings, and vast federations of trade unions for groupings by functions -- the two interwoven and providing support to each to meet the needs of society -- . . . groupings by personal affinities . . . allow the satisfaction of all social needs: consumption, production and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection against aggression, mutual aid, territorial defence" [Modern Science and Anarchy, pp. 164-5]
"the complete independence of the Communes, the Federation of free communes and the social revolution in the communes, that is to say the formation of associated productive groups in place of the state organisation." [quoted by Camillo Berneri, "Peter Kropotkin: His Federalist Ideas", pp. 268-282, The Raven, Vol. 8, No. 2, p. 275]
Bakunin also mentions that those defending the revolution would have a say in the revolutionary structure -- the "Commune will be organised by the standing federation of the Barricades and by the creation of a Revolutionary Council composed of . . . delegates from each barricade . . . vested with plenary but accountable and removable mandates." [Op. Cit., p. 171] This obviously parallels the democratic nature of the CNT militias.
Interestingly enough, Marx commented that "odd barricades, these barricades of the Alliance [Bakunin's anarchist organisation], where instead of fighting they spend their time writing mandates." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 111] Obviously the importance of militia self-management was as lost on him as it was on Lenin and Trotsky -- under Marx's state would its defenders just be cannon-fodder, obeying their government and officers without the ability to help determine the revolution they were fighting for? Apparently so. Moreover, Marx quotes Bakunin's support for "responsible and recallable delegates, vested with their imperative mandates" without commenting on the fact Bakunin predicts those features of the Paris Commune Marx praised in his Civil War in France by a number of years. Looks like Morrow is not the first Marxist to appropriate anarchist ideas without crediting their source.
As can be seen, Morrow's suggestion on how to push the Spanish Revolution forward just repeats the ideas of anarchism. Any one familiar with anarchist theory would not be surprised by this as they would know that we have seen a free federation of workplace and communal associations as the basis of a revolution and, therefore, a free society since the time of Proudhon. Thus Morrow's "Trotskyist" vision of a federation of workers' council actually reproduces basic anarchist ideas, ideas which pre-date Lenin's support for soviets as the basis of his "workers' state" by over half a century (we will indicate the fundamental difference between the anarchist vision and the Trotskyist in due course).
As an aside, and as we noted in section H.1.4, these quotes by Bakunin and Kropotkin make a mockery of Lenin's assertion that anarchists do not analysis "what to put in the place of what has been destroyed [i.e. the old state machine] and how" [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 362] Anarchists have always suggested a clear answer to what we should "replace" the state with -- namely free federations of working class organisations created in the struggle against capital and state. To state otherwise is to either be ignorant of anarchist theory or seek to deceive.
Some anarchists like Bakunin and the anarcho-syndicalists and collectivists saw these organisations being based primarily on libertarian labour unions complemented by whatever organisations were created in the process of revolution ("The future society must be nothing else than the universalisation of the organisation that the International has formed for itself" -- "The Sonvillier Circular" echoing Bakunin, quoted by Brian Morris, Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom, p. 61] Others like Kropotkin and anarcho-communists saw it as a free federation of organisations created by the process of revolution itself. While anarchists did not present a blueprint of what would occur after the revolution (and rightly so) they did provide a general outline in terms of a decentralised, free federation of self-managed workers' associations as well as linking these future forms of working class self-government with the forms generated in the current class struggle in the here and now.
Similarly, Lenin's other assertion that anarchists do not study "the concrete lessons of previous proletarian revolutions" [Ibid.] is equally baseless, as any one reading, say, Kropotkin's work would soon realise (for example, The Great French Revolution, Modern Science and Anarchy or his pamphlet "Revolutionary Government"). Starting with Bakunin, anarchists analysed the experiences of the Paris Commune and the class struggle itself to generalise political conclusions from them (for example, the vision of a free society as a federation of workers' associations is clearly a product of analysing the class struggle and looking at the failures of the Commune). Given that Lenin states in the same work that "anarchists had tried to claim the Paris Commune as their 'own'" [p. 350] suggests that anarchists had studied the Paris Commune and he was aware of that fact. Of course, Lenin states that we had "failed to give . . . a true solution" to its lessons -- given that the solution anarchists proposed was a federation of workers councils to smash the state and defend the revolution his comments seem strange as this, according to The State and Revolution, is the "Marxist" solution as well (in fact, as we will soon see, Lenin played lip service to this and instead saw the solution as government by his party rather than the masses as a whole).
Thus, Morrow's vision of what was required for a successful revolution parallels that of anarchism. We shall now discuss where and how they differ.
The essential difference between the anarchist and Trotskyist vision of workers' councils as the basis of a revolution is what role these councils should play. For anarchists, these federations of self-managed assemblies is the actual framework of the revolution (and the free society it is trying to create). As Murray Bookchin puts it:
"There can be no separation of the revolutionary process from the revolutionary goal. A society based on self-administration must be achieved by means of self-administration . . . Assembly and community must arise from within the revolutionary process itself; indeed, the revolutionary process must be the formation of assembly and community, and with it, the destruction of power. Assembly and community must become 'fighting words,' not distinct panaceas. They must be created as modes of struggle against the existing society, not as theoretical or programmatic abstractions. . . The factory committees . . . must be managed directly by workers' assemblies in the factories. . . neighbourhood committees, councils and boards must be rooted completely in the neighbourhood assemble. They must be answerable at every point to the assembly, they and their work must be under continual review by the assembly; and finally, their members must be subject to immediate recall by the assembly. The specific gravity of society, in short, must be shifted to its base -- the armed people in permanent assembly." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, pp. 167-9]
Thus the anarchist social revolution sees workers' councils as organs of working class self-management, the means by which they control their own lives and create a new society based on their needs, visions, dreams and hopes. They are not seen as means by which others, the revolutionary party, seized power on behalf of the people as Trotskyists do.
Harsh words? No, as can be seen from Morrow who is quite clear on the role of working class organisation -- it is seen purely as the means by which the party can take power. As he argues, there is "no magic in the soviet form: it is merely the most accurate, most quickly reflecting and responsively changing form of political representation of the masses. . . It would provide the arena in which the revolutionary party can win the support of the working class." [Op. Cit., p. 136]
He states that initially the "reformist majority in the executive committee would decline the assumption of state power. But the workers could still find in the soviets their natural organs of struggle until the genuinely revolutionary elements in the various parties banded together to win a revolutionary majority in the congress and establish a workers' state." In other words, the "workers' state, the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . can only be brought into existence by the direct, political intervention of the masses, through the factory and village councils (soviets) at that point where a majority in the soviets is wielded by the workers' party or parties which are determined to overthrow the bourgeois state. Such was the basic theoretical contribution of Lenin." [Op. Cit., p. 100 and p. 113]
From an anarchist perspective, this indicates well the fundamental difference between anarchism and Trotskyism. For anarchists, the existence of an "executive committee" indicates that the workers' council do not, in fact, have power in society -- rather it is the minority in the executive committee who have been delegated power. Rather than govern themselves and society directly, workers are turned into voters implementing the decisions their leaders have made on their behalf. If revolutionary bodies like workers' councils did create a "workers' state" (as Morrow recommends) then their power would be transferred and centralised into the hands of a so-called "revolutionary" government. In this, Morrow follows his guru Trotsky:
"the proletariat can take power only through its vanguard. In itself the necessity for state power arises from an insufficient cultural level of the masses and their heterogeneity. In the revolutionary vanguard, organised in a party, is crystallised the aspirations of the masses to obtain their freedom. Without the confidence of the class in the vanguard, without support of the vanguard by the class, there can be no talk of the conquest of power.
"In this sense the proletarian revolution and dictatorship are the work of the whole class, but only under the leadership of the vanguard." [Trotsky, "Stalinism and Bolshevism," Writings 1936-37, p. 426]
Thus, rather than the working class as a whole "seizing power", it is the vanguard which takes power -- "a revolutionary party, even after seizing power . . . is still by no means the sovereign ruler of society." [Op. Cit., p. 424] He mocks the anarchist idea that a socialist revolution should be based on the self-management of workers within their own autonomous class organisations:
"Those who propose the abstraction of Soviets to the party dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the party leadership were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat." [Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 430]
In this he followed comments made when he was in power. In 1920 he argued that "[w]e have more than once been accused of having substituted for the dictatorships of the Soviets the dictatorship of the party. Yet it can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the Soviets became possible only be means of the dictatorship of the party. It is thanks to the . . . party . . . [that] the Soviets . . . [became] transformed from shapeless parliaments of labour into the apparatus of the supremacy of labour. In this 'substitution' of the power of the party for the power of the working class these is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working class." [Terrorism and Communism, p. 109] Any claims that Trotsky's infamously authoritarian (indeed dictatorial) politics were a temporary aberration caused by the necessities of the Russian Civil War are refuted by these quotes -- 17 years later he was still arguing the same point.
He had the same vision of party dictatorship being the basis of a revolution in 1924. Commenting on the Bolshevik Party conference of April 1917, he states that "whole of . . . Conference was devoted to the following fundamental question: Are we heading toward the conquest of power in the name of the socialist revolution or are we helping (anybody and everybody) to complete the democratic revolution? . . . Lenin's position was this: . . . the capture of the soviet majority; the overthrow of the Provisional Government; the seizure of power through the soviets." Note, through the soviets not by the soviets thus indicating the fact the Party would hold the real power, not the soviets of workers' delegates. Moreover, he states that "to prepare the insurrection and to carry it out under cover of preparing for the Second Soviet Congress and under the slogan of defending it, was of inestimable advantage to us." He continued by noting that it was "one thing to prepare an armed insurrection under the naked slogan of the seizure of power by the party, and quite another thing to prepare and then carry out an insurrection under the slogan of defending the rights of the Congress of Soviets." The Soviet Congress just provided "the legal cover" for the Bolshevik plans rather than a desire to see the Soviets actually start managing society. [The Lessons of October, p. 134, p. 158 and p. 161]
We are not denying that Trotskyists do aim to gain a majority within working class conferences. That is clear. Anarchists also seek to gain the support of the mass of the population. It is what they do next that counts. Trotskyists seek to create a government above these organisations and dominate the executive committees that requires. Thus power in society shifts to the top, to the leaders of the centralised party in charge of the centralised state. The workers' become mere electors rather than actual controllers of the revolution. Anarchists, in contrast, seek to dissolve power back into the hands of society and empower the individual by giving them a direct say in the revolution through their workplace, community and militia assemblies and their councils and conferences.
Trotskyists, therefore, advocate workers councils because they see them as the means the vanguard party can take power. Rather than seeing socialism or "workers' power" as a society in which everyone would directly control their own affairs, Trotskyists see it in terms of working class people delegating their power into the hands of a government. Needless to say, the two things are not identical and, in practice, the government soon turns from being the people's servant into its master.
It is clear that Morrow always discusses workers councils in terms of the strategy and program of the party, not the value that workers councils have as organs of direct workers control of society. He clearly advocates workers councils because he sees them as the best way for the vanguard party to rally workers around its leadership and organise the seizure of state power. At no time does he see then as means by which working class people can govern themselves directly -- quite the reverse.
The danger of such an approach is obvious. The government will soon become isolated from the mass of the population and, due to the centralised nature of the state, difficult to hold accountable. Moreover, given the dominant role of the party in the new state and the perspective that it is the workers' vanguard, it becomes increasingly likely that it will place its power before that of those it claims to represent.
Certainly Trotsky's role in the Russian revolution tells us that the power of the party was more important to him than democratic control by workers through mass bodies. When the workers and sailors of the Kronstadt navy base rebelled in 1921, in solidarity with striking workers in Petrograd, they were demanding freedom of the press for socialist and anarchist groups and new elections to the soviets. But the reaction of the Bolshevik leadership was to crush the Kronstadt dissent in blood. Trotsky's attitude towards workers democracy was clearly expressed at the time:
"They [the dissent Bolsheviks of the Workers' Opposition] 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 worker's democracy!"
He spoke of the "revolutionary historic birthright of the Party" and that it "is obliged to maintain its dictatorship . . . regardless of temporary vacillations even in the working class . . . The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy." [quoted by M. Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 78]
This perspective naturally follows from Trotsky's vanguardist politics. For Leninists, the party is the bearer of "socialist consciousness" and, according to Lenin in What is to be Done?, workers, by their own efforts, can only achieve a "trade union" consciousness and, indeed, "there can be no talk of an independent ideology being developed by the masses of workers in the process of their struggle" and so "the only choice is: either bourgeois or socialist ideology" (the later being developed not by workers but by the "bourgeois intelligentsia"). [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 82 and p. 74] To weaken or question the party means to weaken or question the socialist nature of the revolution and so weaken the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Thus we have the paradoxical situation of the "proletarian dictatorship" repressing workers, eliminating democracy and maintaining itself against the "passing moods" of the workers (which means rejecting what democracy is all about). Hence Lenin's comment at a conference of the Cheka (his political police) in 1920:
"Without revolutionary coercion directed against the avowed enemies of the workers and peasants, it is impossible to break down the resistance of these exploiters. On the other hand, revolutionary coercion is bound to be employed towards the wavering and unstable elements among the masses themselves." [Collected Works, vol. 42, p. 170]
Significantly, of the 17 000 camp detainees on whom statistical information was available on 1 November 1920, peasants and workers constituted the largest groups, at 39% and 34% respectively. Similarly, of the 40 913 prisoners held in December 1921 (of whom 44% had been committed by the Cheka) nearly 84% were illiterate or minimally educated, clearly, therefore, either peasants of workers. [George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police, p. 178] Needless to say, Lenin failed to mention this aspect of his system in The State and Revolution (a failure shared by Morrow and later Trotskyists -- see section H.1.7).
It is hard to combine these facts and Lenin's and Trotsky's comments with the claim that the "workers' state" is an instrument of class rule -- after all, Lenin is acknowledging that coercion will be exercised against members of the working class as well. The question of course arises -- who decides what a "wavering" or "unstable" element is? Given their comments on the role of the party and the need for the party to assume power, it will mean in practice whoever rejects the government's decisions (for example, strikers, local soviets who reject central decrees and instructions, workers who vote for anarchists or parties other than the Bolshevik party in elections to soviets, unions and so on, socialists and anarchists, etc.). Given a hierarchical system, Lenin's comment is simply a justification for state repression of its enemies (including elements within or even the whole working class).
It could be argued, however, that workers could use the soviets to recall the government. However, this fails for two reasons (we will ignore the question of the interests of the bureaucratic machine which will inevitably surround a centralised body -- see section H.3.9 for further discussion).
Firstly, the Leninist state will be highly centralised, with power flowing from the top-down. This means that in order to revoke the government, all the soviets in all parts of the country must, at the same time, recall their delegates and organise a national congress of soviets (which, we stress, is not in permanent session). The local soviets are bound to carry out the commands of the central government (to quote the Soviet constitution of 1918 -- they are to "carry out all orders of the respective higher organs of the soviet power"). Any independence on their part would be considered "wavering" or an expression of "unstable" natures and so subject to "revolutionary coercion". In a highly centralised system, the means of accountability is reduced to the usual bourgeois level -- vote in the general election every few years (which, in any case, can be annulled by the government to ensure that the soviets do not go back into the "mud" via the "passing moods" caused by the "insufficient cultural level of the masses"). In other words, the soviet form may be the "most accurate, most quickly reflecting and responsively changing form of political representation of the masses" (to use Morrow's words) but only before they become transformed into state organs.
Secondly, "revolutionary coercion" against "wavering" elements does not happen in isolation. It will encourage critical workers to keep quiet in case they, too, are deemed "unstable" and become subject to "revolutionary" coercion. As a government policy it can have no other effect than deterring democracy.
Thus Trotskyist politics provides the rationale for eliminating even the limited role of soviets for electing representatives they hold in that ideology.
Morrow argues that "[o]ne must never forget . . . that soviets do not begin as organs of state power" rather they start as "organs defending the workers' daily interests" and include "powerful strike committees." [Op. Cit., p. 136] That is true, initially workers' councils are expressions of working class power and are organs of working class self-management and self-activity. They are subject to direct control from below and unite from the bottom up. However, once they are turned into "organs of state power" their role (to re-quote the Soviet constitution of 1918) becomes that of "carry[ing] out all orders of the respective higher organs of the soviet power." Soviet power is replaced by party power and they become a shell of their former selves -- essentially rubber-stamps for the decisions of the party central committee.
Ironically, Morrow quotes the main theoretician of the Spanish Socialist Party as stating "the organ of the proletarian dictatorship will be the Socialist Party" and states that they "were saying precisely what the anarchist leaders had been accusing both communists and revolutionary socialists of meaning by the proletarian dictatorship." [Op. Cit., p. 99 and p. 100] This is hardly surprising, as this was what the likes of Lenin and Trotsky had been arguing. As well as the quotes we have provided above, we may add Trotsky's comment that the "fundamental instrument of proletarian revolution is the party." [Lessons of October, p. 118] And the resolution of the Second World Congress of the Communist International which stated that "[e]very class struggle is a political struggle. The goal of this struggle . . . is the conquest of political power. Political power cannot be seized, organised and operated except through a political party." [cited by Duncan Hallas, The Comintern, p. 35] In addition, we may quote Lenin's opinion that:
"The very presentation of the question -- 'dictatorship of the Party or dictatorship of the class, dictatorship (Party) of the leaders or dictatorship (Party) of the masses?' -- is evidence of the most incredible and hopeless confusion of mind . . . [because] classes are usually . . . led by political parties. . . "
And:
"To go so far in this matter as to draw a contrast in general between the dictatorship of the masses and the dictatorship of the leaders, is ridiculously absurd and stupid." [Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, pp. 25-6 and p. 27]
As Lenin and Trotsky constantly argued, proletarian dictatorship was impossible without the political party of the workers (whatever its name). Indeed, to even discuss any difference between the dictatorship of the class and that of the party just indicated a confused mind. Hence Morrow's comments are incredulous, particularly as he himself stresses that the soviet form is useful purely as a means of gaining support for the revolutionary party which would take over the executive of the workers' councils. He clearly is aware that the party is the essential organ of proletarian rule from a Leninist perspective -- without the dictatorship of the party, Trotsky argues, the soviets fall back into the mud. Trotsky, indeed, stressed this need for the dictatorship of the party rather than of the proletariat in a letter written in 1937:
"The revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party is for me not a thing that one can freely accept or reject: It is an objective necessity imposed upon us by the social realities -- the class struggle, the heterogeneity of the revolutionary class, the necessity for a selected vanguard in order to assure the victory. The dictatorship of a party belongs to the barbarian prehistory as does the state itself, but we can not jump over this chapter, which can open (not at one stroke) genuine human history. . . The revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution . . . Abstractly speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship could be replaced by the 'dictatorship' of the whole toiling people without any party, but this presupposes such a high level of political development among the masses that it can never be achieved under capitalist conditions. The reason for the revolution comes from the circumstance that capitalism does not permit the material and the moral development of the masses." [Trotsky, Writings 1936-37, pp. 513-4]
The net result of Bolshevik politics in Russia was that Lenin and Trotsky undermined the self-management of working class bodies during the Russian Revolution and before the Civil War started in May 1918. We have already chronicled Trotsky's elimination of democracy and equality in the Red Army (see section 11). A similar fate befell the factory committees (see section 17) and soviet democracy (as noted above). The logic of Bolshevism is such that at no point did Lenin describe the suppression of soviet democracy and workers' control as a defeat (indeed, as far as workers' control went Lenin quickly moved to a position favouring one-man management). We discuss the Russian Revolution in more detail in section H.6 and so will not do so here.
All in all, while Morrow's rhetoric on the nature of the social revolution may sound anarchist, there are important differences between the two visions. While Trotskyists support workers' councils on purely instrumentalist grounds as the best means of gaining support for their party's assumption of governmental power, anarchists see workers' councils as the means by which people can revolutionise society and themselves by practising self-management in all aspects of their lives. The difference is important and its ramifications signify why the Russian Revolution became the "dictatorship over the proletariat" Bakunin predicted. His words still ring true:
"[b]y popular government they [the Marxists] mean government of the people by a small under of representatives elected by the people. . . [That is,] government of the vast majority of the people by a privileged minority. But this minority, the Marxists say, will consist of workers. Yes, perhaps, of former workers, who, as soon as they become rulers or representatives of the people will cease to be workers and will begin to look upon the whole workers' world from the heights of the state. They will no longer represent the people but themselves and their own pretensions to govern the people." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 178]
It was for this reason that he argued the anarchists do "not accept, even in the process of revolutionary transition, either constituent assemblies, provisional governments or so-called revolutionary dictatorships; because we are convinced that revolution is only sincere, honest and real in the hands of the masses, and that when it is concentrated in those of a few ruling individuals it inevitably and immediately becomes reaction." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 237] The history of the Russian Revolution proved him right. Hence anarchist support for popular assemblies and federations of workers' councils as the framework of the social revolution rather than as a means to elect a "revolutionary" government.
One last point. We must point out that Morrow's follows Lenin in favouring executive committees associated with workers' councils. In this he actually ignores Marx's (and Lenin's, in State and Revolution) comments that the Paris Commune was "to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time." [Selected Writings, p. 287] The existence of executive committees was coded into the Soviet Union's 1918 Constitution. This suggests two things. Firstly, Leninism and Trotskyism differ on fundamental points with Marx and so the claim that Leninism equals Marxism is difficult to support (the existence of libertarian Marxists like Anton Pannekoek and other council communists also disprove such claims). Secondly, it indicates that Lenin's claims in State and Revolution were ignored once the Bolsheviks took power so indicating that use of that work to prove the democratic nature of Bolshevism is flawed).
Moreover, Marx's support of the fusion of executive and legislative powers is not as revolutionary as some imagine. For anarchists, as Bookchin argues, "[i]n point of fact, the consolidation of 'executive and legislative' functions in a single body was regressive. It simply identified the process of policy-making, a function that rightly should belong to the people in assembly, with the technical execution of these policies, a function that should be left to strictly administrative bodies subject to rotation, recall, limitations of tenure . . . Accordingly, the melding of policy formation with administration placed the institutional emphasis of classical [Marxist] socialism on centralised bodies, indeed, by an ironical twist of historical events, bestowing the privilege of formulating policy on the 'higher bodies' of socialist hierarchies and their execution precisely on the more popular 'revolutionary committees' below." [Toward an Ecological Society, pp. 215-6]
Morrow asserts two "fundamental" tenets of "anarchism" in his book [Op. Cit., pp. 101-2]. Unfortunately for him, his claims are somewhat at odds with reality. Anarchism, as we will prove in section 14, does not hold one of the positions Morrow states it does. The first "tenet" of anarchism he fails to discuss at all and so the reader cannot understand why anarchists think as they do. We discuss this "tenet" here.
The first tenet is that anarchism "has consistently refused to recognise the distinction between a bourgeois and a workers' state. Even in the days of Lenin and Trotsky, anarchism denounced the Soviet Union as an exploiters' regime." [Op. Cit., p. 101] It is due to this, he argues, the CNT co-operated with the bourgeois state:
"The false anarchist teachings on the nature of the state . . . should logically have led them [the CNT] to refuse governmental participation in any event . . . the anarchists were in the intolerable position of objecting to the necessary administrative co-ordination and centralisation of the work they had already begun. Their anti-statism 'as such' had to be thrown off. What did remain, to wreck disaster in the end, was their failure to recognise the distinction between a workers' and a bourgeois state." [Op. Cit., p. 101]
Needless to say, Morrow does not bother to explain why anarchists consider the bourgeois and workers' state to be similar. If he did then perhaps his readers would agree with the anarchists on this matter. However, before discussing that we have to address a misrepresentation of Morrow's. Rather than the expression of anarchist politics, the actions of the CNT were in direct opposition to them. As we showed in the section 12, anarchists see a social revolution in terms of creating federations of workers associations (i.e. workers' councils). It was this vision that had created the structure of the CNT (as Bakunin had argued, "the organisation of the trade sections and their representation in the Chambers of Labour . . . bear in themselves the living seeds of the new society which is to replace the old one. They are creating not only the ideas, but also the facts of the future itself" [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 255]).
Thus, the social revolution would see the workers' organisation (be they labour unions or spontaneously created organs) "tak[ing] the revolution into its own hands . . . an earnest international organisation of workers' associations . . . [would] replac[e] this departing political world of States and bourgeoisie." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 110] This is precisely what the CNT did not do -- rather it decided against following anarchist theory and instead decided to co-operate with other parties and unions in the "Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias" (at least temporarily until the CNT stronghold in Saragossa was liberated by CNT militias). In effect, it created a UGT-like "Alliance" with other anti-fascist parties and unions and rejected its pre-war policy of "unity from below." The CNT and FAI leadership decided not to talk of libertarian communism but only of the fight against fascism. A greater mistake they could not have made.
An anarchist approach in the aftermath of the fascist uprising would have meant replacing the Generalitat with a federal assembly of delegates from workplace and local community assemblies (a Defence Council, to use a CNT expression). Only popular assemblies (not political parties) would be represented (parties would have an influence only in proportion to their influence in the basic assemblies). All the CNT would have had do was to call a Regional Congress of unions and invite the UGT, independent unions and unorganised workplaces to send delegates to create the framework of this system. This, we must stress, was not done. We will discuss why in section 20 and so will refrain from doing so here. However, because the CNT in effect "postponed" the political aspects of the social revolution (namely, to quote Kropotkin, to "smash the State and replace it with the Federation [of Communes]" [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 259]) the natural result would be exactly as Morrow explains:
"But isn't it a far cry from the failure to create the organs to overthrow the bourgeoisie, to the acceptance of the role of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie? Not at all . . . Without developing soviets -- workers' councils -- it was inevitable that even the anarchists and the POUM would drift into governmental collaboration with the bourgeoisie." [Op. Cit., pp. 88-9]
As Kropotkin predicted, "there can be no half-way house: either the Commune is to be absolutely free to endow itself with whatever institutions it wishes and introduce all reforms and revolutions it may deem necessary, or else it will remain . . . a mere subsidiary of the State, chained in its every movement." [Op. Cit., p. 259] Without an alternative means of co-ordinating the struggle, the CNT would, as Morrow argued, have little choice but to collaborate with the state. However, rather than being a product of anarchist theory, as Morrow states, this came about by ignoring that theory (see section 20).
This can be seen from the false alternative used to justify the CNT's and FAI's actions -- namely, "either libertarian communism, which means anarchist dictatorship, or democracy, which means collaboration." The creation of libertarian communism is done from below by those subject to capitalist and statist hierarchy overthrowing those with power over them by smashing the state machine and replacing it with self-managed organisations as well as expropriating capital and placing it under workers' self-management. As Murray Bookchin argues:
"Underlying all [the] errors [of the CNT], at least in theoretical terms, was the CNT-FAI's absurd notion that if it assumed power in the areas it controlled, it was establishing a 'State.' As long as the institutions of power consisted of armed workers and peasants as distinguished from a professional bureaucracy, police force, army, and cabal of politicians and judges, they were no[t] a State . . . These institutions, in fact comprised a revolutionary people in arms . . . not a professional apparatus that could be regarded as a State in any meaningful sense of the term. . . That the 'taking of power' by an armed people in militias, libertarian unions and federations, peasant communes and industrial collectives could be viewed as an 'anarchist dictatorship' reveals the incredible confusion that filled the minds of the 'influential militants.'" ["Looking Back at Spain," pp. 53-96, The Radical Papers, pp. 86-7]
This perspective explains why anarchists do not see any fundamental difference between a so-called "workers' state" and the existing state. For anarchists, the state is based fundamentally on hierarchical power -- the delegation of power into the hands of a few, of a government, of an "executive" committee. Unlike Lenin, who stressed the "bodies of armed men" aspect of the state, anarchists consider the real question as one of who will tell these "bodies of armed men" what to do. Will it be the people as a whole (as expressed through their self-managed organisations) or will be it a government (perhaps elected by representative organisations)?
If it was simply a question of consolidating a revolution and its self-defence then there would be no argument:
"But perhaps the truth is simply this: . . . [some] take the expression 'dictatorship of the proletariat' to mean simply the revolutionary action of the workers in taking possession of the land and the instruments of labour, and trying to build a society and organise a way of life in which there will be no place for a class that exploits and oppresses the producers.
"Thus constructed, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' would be the effective power of all workers trying to bring down capitalist society and would thus turn into Anarchy as soon as resistance from reactionaries would have ceased and no one can any longer seek to compel the masses by violence to obey and work for him. In which case, the discrepancy between us would be nothing more than a question of semantics. Dictatorship of the proletariat would signify the dictatorship of everyone, which is to say, it would be a dictatorship no longer, just as government by everybody is no longer a government in the authoritarian, historical and practical sense of the word.
"But the real supporters of 'dictatorship of the proletariat' do not take that line, as they are making quite plain in Russia. Of course, the proletariat has a hand in this, just as the people has a part to play in democratic regimes, that is to say, to conceal the reality of things. In reality, what we have is the dictatorship of one party, or rather, of one' party's leaders: a genuine dictatorship, with its decrees, its penal sanctions, its henchmen and above all its armed forces, which are at present [1919] also deployed in the defence of the revolution against its external enemies, but which will tomorrow be used to impose the dictator's will upon the workers, to apply a break on revolution, to consolidate the new interests in the process of emerging and protect a new privileged class against the masses." [Malatesta, No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, pp. 38-9]
Maurice Brinton sums up the issue well when he argued that "workers' power" "cannot be identified or equated with the power of the Party -- as it repeatedly was by the Bolsheviks . . . What 'taking power' really implies is that the vast majority of the working class at last realises its ability to manage both production and society -- and organises to this end." [The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. xiv]
The question is, therefore, one of who "seizes power" -- will it be the mass of the population or will it be a party claiming to represent the mass of the population. The difference is vital -- and anyone who confuses the issue (like Lenin) does so either out of stupidity or vested interests.
If it is the mass of people then they have to express themselves and their power (i.e. the power to manage their own affairs). That requires that individuals -- no matter where they are, be it in the workplace, community or on the front line -- are part of self-managed organisations. Only by self-management in functional groups can working class people be said to controlling their own lives and determining their own fate. Such a system of popular assemblies and their means of defence would not be a state in the anarchist sense of the word.
As we argued in section 12, the Trotskyist vision of revolution, while seeming in some ways similar to that of anarchists, differ on this question. For Trotskyists, the party takes power, not the mass of the population directly. Only if you view "proletarian" seizure of power in terms of electing a political party to government could you see the elimination of functional democracy in the armed forces and the workplaces as no threat to working class power. Given Trotsky