The bitter fruits of anarchism

When anarchism was put to the test

Josh Lees

The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky compared the theory of anarchism to an umbrella full of holes: useless precisely when it rains. The truth of this insight was forcibly demonstrated when anarchism failed the test of the Spanish Revolution. On July 1936, the Spanish military launched a coup to overthrow the Popular Front government which had been elected six months earlier. They were responding to the pleas and demands of the industrial and agricultural capitalists, the large landowners, the aristocracy and the clergy. The Spanish ruling classes had been baying for a restoration of "law and order" via military dictatorship for about as long as Spanish parliamentary democracy itself - that is, since their last dictatorship had ended in 1931. The new republic born in that year satisfied no one. A small number of landowners controlled two-thirds of the country's arable land, most of it held in large estates. Of the 5 million peasants in Spain, 1.5 million lived as sharecroppers and another 1.5 million were landless workers. Hunger and starvation were commonplace. Workers in the rapidly industrialising cities faced low wages, terrible working conditions, insecurity and housing shortages. When workers and peasants demanded more than the government was willing to offer, their strikes and protests were met with mass arrests, sackings and bullets. Between 1931 and 1936, Spanish society became more and more polarised. The ruling class and sections of the middle classes shifted to the right, some joining the fascist Falange, most hoping the military would do the job for them. Workers were radicalised, hundreds of thousands pouring into either the General Union of Workers (UGT), led by the left wing of the Socialist party, or the anarcho-syndicalist National Confederation of Workers (CNT). The mood was summed up by a CNT labourer: "We hated the bourgeoisie, they treated us like animals. They were our enemies... And they thought the same of us. There was a hatred between us... we wanted them to pay us a decent wage and to treat us like human beings, with respect. There was only one way to achieve that - by fighting them..." The Spanish anarchists For millions of Spanish workers this fighting spirit seemed to be embodied in the CNT, whose politics and leadership were dominated by the Federation of Iberian Anarchists (FAI), the main anarchist organisation in Spain. The CNT had a history of uncompromising militancy, audacity and heroism. They spoke of revolution, of the need to smash the oppressive state and create a classless society. But the politics of anarchism were bound to betray such hopes. From 1931-36 the CNT pursued a policy of ultra-left antics and sectarianism, launching easily-crushed insurrections and boycotting elections. These episodes demonstrate something which became much clearer later on: that the anarchists had no serious strategy to win over the majority of the working class, to wage a successful revolution, to actually defeat the ruling class and its state. Nevertheless, when the CNT dropped its policy of boycotting elections in 1936, the Popular Front - made up of the middle class republican parties and all the workers' parties except the CNT-FAI - won a clear victory. Rather than waiting for the feeble reforms promised by the new government, workers immediately stormed the prisons and released political prisoners, while peasants began forcibly seizing the land. Losing all faith in the government to crush this movement once and for all, the military plotted its coup. Workers resist the coup When the army rose up to depose the government and impose martial law, the government's first reflex was to capitulate. Like many liberal or reformist leaders past and present, they feared workers' revolution more than they feared dictatorship or fascism. But the workers of Spain had seen Hitler triumph in Germany without any serious resistance; they were determined not to let the same happen again. When news spread of the military uprising, despite the best efforts of the government to assure everyone of the "absolute tranquillity of the whole peninsula", working class militants set about defending themselves. The government refused to arm the workers, so they stormed armouries, police stations and barracks and armed themselves. Workers' committees established militias, set up checkpoints, arrested right-wingers, rushed to the front to fight the fascists, and took over transport and production in the cities and the countryside. Spain was split in two, roughly half controlled by the right, the rest still officially ruled by the Popular Front government, although most real power now lay in the hands of the workers' committees. The old machinery of state had completely crumbled, with the army, police and state bureaucrats either going over to support the military, or being swept aside by the workers' revolution. This process went furthest in Catalonia, whose capital Barcelona was the largest and most industrialised city in Spain, and the stronghold of the CNT. The anarchists reject power But the reality of the revolution, of workers taking power into their hands in order to combat fascism and the capitalists and to create a classless world, came into immediate conflict with anarchist principles. These were summed up by the CNT writer Jose Peirats: "There is no such thing as revolutionary power, for all power is reactionary by nature". After the military coup had been routed by the workers in Barcelona, the Catalonian President called the CNT-FAI leaders into his office and told them: "Today you are the masters of the city and of Catalonia... You have conquered and everything is in your power; if you do not need or want me as president of Catalonia, tell me now." The anarchists declined. FAI leader Diego Abad de Santillán wrote: "We could have...declared the [government] null and void, and imposed the true power of the people in its place, but we did not believe in dictatorship when it was being exercised against us, and we did not want it when we could exercise it ourselves only at the expense of others." The anarchists' abstract opposition to "politics" and "power" now translated in practice to preferring to leave power in the hands of the pro-capitalist government and state. This position was completely at odds with the needs of the revolution and the civil war against Franco's advancing armies. In order to win the working class needed to democratically control, organise and centralise all their revolutionary resources, from the military front to production at home, to finance, transport, policing and so on. In other words, what was needed was a workers' state, built and organised on the basis already provided by the workers' own actions in setting up the revolutionary committees. The anarchist leaders opposed such moves on principle as "authoritarian", even as the CNT workers in practice carried many of them out. But the failure to take state power out of the hands of the pro-capitalist Popular Front government and replace it with a workers' state meant that workers could not fully establish their own control over society. The workers' collectivisation of production still took place within the framework of the capitalist market, "except that whereas before it was the owners who competed amongst themselves it is now the workers." Many of the collectives remained dependent on the government for finance and coordination. Moreover, the government did not just passively accept the situation of dual power. It was desperate to preserve capitalism and private property, and set about trying to reimpose its authority and recreate the machinery of state. The anarchist betrayal The government argued that the social revolution and all the elements of workers' power - such as workers' militias and revolutionary committees - must be dissolved in order to win the war against fascism. In reality fascism could only be defeated by a revolutionary war, which could mobilise the mass of Spanish workers and peasants. But after rejecting this alternative by refusing to take power, the anarchists couldn't help capitulating to the argument, championed by the Stalinists, that the revolution had to be stopped. Therefore, having rejected workers' power, the CNT soon entered the capitalist government, first in Catalonia, then nationally. They played the key role in arguing that the workers must dissolve their own revolutionary organisations and instead be bound by the government's decrees. One flowed directly from the other. After leaving power in the hands of the capitalist state, why not collaborate with that state? After rejecting workers' power, why not support dismantling the workers' organisations? With the CNT leaders now thoroughly co-opted, the government set about destroying the revolution. Decrees were passed limiting the power of the factory committees, workers' control of the economy was wound back, and the workers' militias were disarmed in place of a new regular army. Many workers, including CNT supporters, knew that power was slipping out of their hands. In May 1937, government troops demanded that the CNT workers who had been running the Barcelona Telephone Exchange since the revolution hand over control to the central government. This provocation was the last straw. They refused, and immediately barricades went up and street fighting broke out across Barcelona. From the beginning, the CNT leaders told their members to give up. In response the workers burned stacks of CNT papers and shot the radios airing the appeals of their former heroes. For five days the battle continued, but demoralised and disgusted, the workers retreated. The civil war would not be lost for another two years, but May signalled the end of the revolution. Following the fighting a wave of repression saw thousands of revolutionaries killed, tortured and imprisoned. As Trotsky wrote, "In opposing the goal, the conquest of power, the Anarchists could not in the end fail to oppose the means, the revolution."