Benutzereinstellungen

Neue Veranstaltungshinweise

Iberia

Es wurden keine neuen Veranstaltungshinweise in der letzten Woche veröffentlicht

Kommende Veranstaltungen

Iberia | History of anarchism

Keine kommenden Veranstaltungen veröffentlicht

Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-revolution in Barcelona, 1898–1937

category iberia | history of anarchism | review author Wednesday November 24, 2010 03:45author by KSL - Kate Sharpley Library Report this post to the editors

"Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-revolution in Barcelona, 1898–1937" by Chris Ealham [Review]

Anarchism is more than just the idea of stateless socialism, and the movement is always shaped by the environment where it grows. In Anarchism and the City, Ealham’s focus is not personalities or philosophies, but anarchist activity and how it connected to working class life. He covers the context it evolved and operated in, including the ideas and actions of ruling class.
5838_popup.jpg

This is an academic book, so you get the language of the specialist: “Consistent with the culture of working class resistance to the spatial logic of bourgeois control in the city and betraying signs of earlier protest repertoires, those deemed responsible for the military coup were punished through the destruction of their property.” (p185) Thankfully, it’s not incomprehensible, and even gets poetic at times: “L’Opinió [left-wing Republican paper] printed a section entitled ‘The Robbery of the Day’ in which minor non-violent thefts were described sensationally as if the streets were teeming with blood-crazed felons.” (p151)

You get some great stories about what the anarchists (and workers) did, from the CNT Public Services Union tunnelling into the Model Jail in the December 1933 insurrection (p136) to the revolutionary recycling of 1936: “In one barri the local church was converted into a cinema. Elsewhere, confession boxes were used as newspaper kiosks, market stalls and bus shelters…” (p187)

Ealham doesn’t just say what happened, but why. He records the actions and ideas of the powerful, but he’s especially strong on the connection between the anarchists and the working class communities they lived in. This is the key to the book. The strength of the CNT was not in the numbers at conferences, but the numbers it could call on on the streets:

“One of the great paradoxes of the CNT was that, despite its huge membership in the city, the number of union activists was relatively small. … Besides their higher degree of class consciousness – activists were commonly known as ‘the ones with ideas’ (los con ideas) – there was nothing in their dress, lifestyle, behaviour, experiences, speech or place of residence to set them apart from the rest of the workers and, whether at a public meeting, a paper sale, in the factory or the cafe, activists could convey and disseminate ideas in a way that workers found both convincing and understandable.” (p41-2) And the tactics they used were connected to working-class life too: “CNT tactics like boycotts, demonstrations and strikes built on neighbourhood sociability: union assemblies mirrored working-class street culture, and the reciprocal solidarity of the barris was concretised and given organisational expression by the support afforded to confederated unions.” (p36)

This is an epic contribution to the history of anarchism and like the best history books leaves you wanting more (even if you don’t agree with all of Ealham’s perspectives). Today’s anarchist activists (from syndicalists to insurrectionaries) will find some fascinating stories here. But more importantly, they will find food for thought about where were are, where we want to be, and how we get there. If you have a new world in your heart, read this and start asking who’s going to help you build it.

Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-revolution in Barcelona, 1898–1937 by Chris Ealham
AK Press, 2010. $20 / £17. ISBN 9781849350129
First published in 2005 by Routledge as Class, culture and conflict in Barcelona 1898-1937

[From KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 63-64, October 2010 [Double issue]

Verwandter Link: http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/cc2gqw
This page can be viewed in
English Italiano Deutsch

Iberia | History of anarchism | en

Fri 29 Mar, 09:07

browse text browse image

19_july.png imageJuly 19: When the people rise up, they write history 02:10 Fri 29 Jul by Various anarchist organisations 4 comments

When the people rise up, they are unstoppable and capable of changing history. These events are repeated from time to time and call into question the normal development of the capitalist “common sense” that there is no alternative. Of course, there is! The action of the people in rebellion, who put their bodies into overthrowing authoritarian regimes, dictatorships or coups d'état, demonstrates the importance of popular power and revolutionary preparation in order for major social transformations to take place. [Castellano]

spain.jpg imageAWSM Statement on 85th Anniversary of the Spanish Revolution 11:28 Tue 20 Jul by AWSM 0 comments

Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement (AWSM) statement on the 85th Anniversary of the Spanish Revolution.

textNew publication: Los Maños : the lads from Aragon ; the story of an anti-Franco action group 18:23 Wed 29 Oct by KSL 0 comments

The Kate Sharpley Library collective are pleased to announce the publication of another study of the anarchist resistance to Franco's dictatorship.

ksl.jpg imageNew publication: One Hundred Years of Workers' Solidarity : the History of “Solidaridad Obrera” 00:53 Mon 19 Aug by KSL 0 comments

Solidaridad Obrera (Workers’ Solidarity), founded in Barcelona in 1907, is the voice of Spain’s Anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT: National Confederation of Labour). These essays were issued to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of “Soli” and together they illustrate the changing fortunes of the Anarcho-syndicalist movement, and its enduring attempt to communicate the anarchist idea.

textNew publication: News of the Spanish Revolution : Anti-authoritarian Perspectives on the Events 02:29 Mon 23 Jul by Kate Sharpley Library 2 comments

News of the Spanish Revolution : Anti-authoritarian Perspectives on the Events. Seven articles published in “One Big Union Monthly”, a journal of the Industrial Workers of the World, July, 1937 to February 1938, plus two later pieces on the experiences of participants.
A collection edited by Charlatan Stew. Published by the Kate Sharpley Library and Charlatan Stew: 2012. 88 pages.

One of the stolen CNT membership cards imageSpanish Revolution material stolen from Barcelona Archive 22:24 Mon 13 Feb by Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular de Barcelona 0 comments

On 1 February 2012, several important documents were stolen from the Biblioteca de l'Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular in Barcelona. Original posters from the Civil War era as well as various other objects also from the period of the Spanish Civil War were taken. If anyone has doubles of this material, please put them aside for the Library. If you see something appear on e-bay or other sites of this kind, alert them! [Italiano]

ainglicia.jpg imageNew publication: Anarchism In Galicia : Organisation, Resistance and Women in the Underground 19:15 Tue 09 Aug by KSL 0 comments

The Anarchist movement in Galicia is unknown to English-language readers. These essays tells the stories of the men and women who built it, fought for it, and how they kept it alive in the face of incredible odds.

orobon.jpg imageNew publication: Valeriano Orobón Fernández: Towards the Barricades by Salvador Cano Carrillo 00:58 Sat 23 Apr by KSL 0 comments

Valeriano Orobón Fernández: Towards the Barricades by Salvador Cano Carrillo is out now, as is issue 66 of KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library.

textNew Kate Sharpley Library pamphlet on the resistance to Francoism. 19:23 Sun 28 Feb by KSL 0 comments

The Kate Sharpley Library are pleased to announce our latest publication:
"Anarchist International Action Against Francoism From Genoa 1949 to The First Of May Group" by Antonio Téllez Solà, translated by Paul Sharkey

84095_edo.jpg imageLuis Andrés Edo : 16:44 Wed 25 Mar by Stuart Christie 0 comments

With the death of Luis Andrés Edo, aged 83, in Barcelona, the anarchist movement has lost an outstanding militant and original thinker, and I have lost a comrade-in-arms, a former cell-mate - and an irreplaceable friend.

more >>

imageThe 1918 flu pandemic in the CNT media Apr 29 by Miguel G. BlackSpartak 2 comments

The notorious flu epidemic of 1918 – known as the ‘Spanish’ flu epidemic – was first reported among US troops bound for the First World War trenches. Given the enormous mobility of troops at the time, the disease was largely free to spread to fresh population centres and so it claimed the lives of 50 million people worldwide. Spreading like wildfire. A powerful example of the destructive power of a pandemic.

imageBuilding a mass anarchist movement: the example of Spain’s CNT Oct 02 by Thabang Sefalala* and Lucien van der Walt 0 comments

The ideas of anarchism have often been misunderstood, or sidelined. A proliferation of studies, such as Knowles’ Political Economy from Below, Peirats’ Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, and others, have aimed to address this problem – and also to show that anarchism can never be limited to an ideology merely to keep professors and students busy in debating societies. Anarchists have been labeled “utopians” or regarded as catalysts of chaos and violence, as at the protests in Seattle, 1999, against the World Trade Organization. However, anarchism has a constructive core and an important history as a mass movement – including in its syndicalist (trade union) form. It rejects the authoritarianism and totalitarianism often associated with Marxist regimes, and seeks to present a living alternative to classical Marxism, social democracy and the current neo-liberal hegemonic order. It rejects both the versions of Marxism that have justified massive repression, and the more cautious versions, like that of Desai in his book Marx’s Revenge, which claim that a prolonged capitalist stage – with all its horrors – remains essential before socialism can be attempted. It rejects the ideas that exploitation and oppression are “historical necessities” for historical progress.

imageThe Labour Movement in Spain Nov 04 by KSL 0 comments

(Albert Meltzer was a long-standing supporter of the anarchist movement in Spain. One of our friends suggested we make this article available as one of the best things he wrote. It’s also representative of many of the things he cared about: anarchism, history, emancipation and class struggle. KSL)

imageMichael Seidman and "The Spanish Holocaust" Sep 23 by Stuart Christie 4 comments

What has happened to editorial judgement at the TLS [Times Literary Supplement]? What on earth led the editor to commission the patronisingly offensive twaddle from such a pro-Francoist apologist as Michael Seidman in his review of Paul Preston’s “The Spanish Holocaust”?

imageThe Importance of the Spanish Revolution Oct 09 by Julia Doherty 0 comments

Today a social revolution that took place seventy years ago is remembered by libertarian socialists as an example of how our ideas can work. The Spanish revolution came closer to realising the possibilities of a free stateless society on a huge scale than any other revolution in history.

more >>

imageJuly 19: When the people rise up, they write history Jul 29 4 comments

When the people rise up, they are unstoppable and capable of changing history. These events are repeated from time to time and call into question the normal development of the capitalist “common sense” that there is no alternative. Of course, there is! The action of the people in rebellion, who put their bodies into overthrowing authoritarian regimes, dictatorships or coups d'état, demonstrates the importance of popular power and revolutionary preparation in order for major social transformations to take place. [Castellano]

imageAWSM Statement on 85th Anniversary of the Spanish Revolution Jul 20 AWSM 0 comments

Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement (AWSM) statement on the 85th Anniversary of the Spanish Revolution.

textNew publication: Los Maños : the lads from Aragon ; the story of an anti-Franco action group Oct 29 Kate Sharpley Library 0 comments

The Kate Sharpley Library collective are pleased to announce the publication of another study of the anarchist resistance to Franco's dictatorship.

imageNew publication: One Hundred Years of Workers' Solidarity : the History of “Solidaridad Obrera” Aug 19 Kate Sharpley Library 0 comments

Solidaridad Obrera (Workers’ Solidarity), founded in Barcelona in 1907, is the voice of Spain’s Anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT: National Confederation of Labour). These essays were issued to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of “Soli” and together they illustrate the changing fortunes of the Anarcho-syndicalist movement, and its enduring attempt to communicate the anarchist idea.

textNew publication: News of the Spanish Revolution : Anti-authoritarian Perspectives on the Events Jul 23 KSL 2 comments

News of the Spanish Revolution : Anti-authoritarian Perspectives on the Events. Seven articles published in “One Big Union Monthly”, a journal of the Industrial Workers of the World, July, 1937 to February 1938, plus two later pieces on the experiences of participants.
A collection edited by Charlatan Stew. Published by the Kate Sharpley Library and Charlatan Stew: 2012. 88 pages.

more >>
© 2005-2024 Anarkismo.net. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Anarkismo.net. [ Disclaimer | Privacy ]