Looking back after 70 years (Part 2)

by Tom Wetzel Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:44

The sueldo unico was implemented in some industries and localities. One such location was the city of Hospitalet de Llobregat, a working class suburb on the south edge of Barelona. Textiles were the largest industry but there were also blast furnaces, foundries and metal-working plants. The CNT unions in Hospitalet were part of the labor council of Bajo Llobregat which had advocated overthrowing the Generalitat government in July of ’36. In the city of Hospitalet the CNT did sweep away the old city government, replacing it with a revolutionary committee. The CNT revolutionary committee held various neighborhood assemblies to get feedback. This did not quite equal the pre-war CNT idea of a “free municipality” because the geographic assemblies did not elect the new municipal council; it was controlled by the unions.

Due to differences in the economic situation of collectives, the Hospitalet CNT decided to implement the sueldo unico by proceeding to socialization of the town’s economy, with the more well-off collectives cross-subsidizing the less well-off(46).

The Revolutionary Railway Federation also initially equalized the wages of all the railway workers. At that time, the guards at railway grade crossings in Spain were usually women. They were the lowest paid railway workers. These female workers gained the most from the wage equalization on the railways. Later on, however, the railway federation needed to hire several engineers. They were forced to pay these engineers about 2.5 times the wage paid to the other workers.

Under a market economy, educated professionals could use their scarce expertise to demand higher wages and other privileges. This could be dealt with over time in a socialized economy with a system of free education for workers and a systematic campaign to upgrade workers’ skills. But it would take time to do that, and a socialized economy hadn’t yet been consolidated. Wage equality between men and women doing the same work was only achieved sporadically and was most likely in industries where Mujeres Libres had organized women’s groups. Mujeres Libres had been formed as a national organization in the spring of 1936. In Catalonia, Mujeres Libres came out of a women’s caucus in the CNT unions.

In the early ‘30s the CNT metallurgical sindicato unico in Barcelona began paying Soledad Estorach a small stipend as an organizer. The union was worried about the lack of involvement of women workers in the union. Estorach discovered that if women tried to speak at CNT union meetings, they’d be laughed at by the men. The problem wasn’t just the male chauvinist attitudes of the men.

Estorach came to believe that it was necessary for women to have their own autonomous organization — a safe space where they could study social issues, learn public speaking, and become prepared to be activists. Only then would women be able to hold their own with the men in union meetings. The result was a women’s caucus in the CNT in Catalonia. The women’s caucus also organized child care so that women activists could attend union meetings and get elected as delegates. Mujeres Libres stated that its purpose was to liberate women from the “triple enslavement” of “ignorance, enslavement as women, and enslavement as workers.” The women who founded Mujeres Libres did not use the label “feminist.” They were as class conscious as their male counterparts. And to them, “feminism” was a movement for women to gain access to elite positions in the professions, management, government. During the revolution and war they recruited nearly 30,000 working class women.

Despite their loyalty to the CNT movement, the women who formed Mujeres Libres insisted that women’s liberation was distinct from working class liberation, and refused to be just a subordinate appendage — a “women’s auxiliary” — of the FAI and CNT. They didn’t believe that the men could liberate women. The leaders of the FAI and CNT, on the other hand, insisted that an autonomous women’s movement was “divisive.”

One area of change in gender relations in Spain during the war was the big increase in women working in industry. As men went off to fight in the anti-fascist people’s army, women were recruited to take their place. The Anti-fascist Women’s Association (Asociación de Mujeres Anti-fascistas — AMA) was organizing among the women working in industry. The AMA was a “transmission belt” of the Communist Party. With the AMA gaining influence in industries, the CNT activists feared that women would be recruited to the UGT unions. The CNT unions could be pushed aside. To counter this, the local unions of the CNT opened their union halls to Mujeres Libres. The unions provided space for child care centers, women’s study groups, and literacy classes and apprenticeship programs for women. In collectivized factories, work would be stopped to allow activists from Mujeres Libres to give presentations.

An industry where Mujeres Libres had a strong presence was public transit. Pura Pérez was a member of Mujeres Libres who was one of the first women to drive streetcars in Barcelona. According to Pérez, the men of the CNT public transit union took women on “as apprentices, mechanics, and drivers, and really taught us what to do.” The compañeros of the CNT transit union, Pérez recalled, “really got a kick out of” the amazed looks on the faces of passengers when they realized that a woman was at the controls of the streetcar(47).

Trajectory of the Spanish Communist Party Despite the real proletarian revolution underway in Spain, the Spanish Communist Party (Partido Comunista de España — PCE) insisted that the immediate agenda in Spain was a “bourgeois democratic revolution,” and that the struggle should be seen as simply the defense of the “democratic republic.”

The PCE’s stance, and the Communist International’s attempt to conceal the actual worker revolution in Spain in its propaganda in other countries, was designed to re-assure the western capitalist “democracies,” especially the USA, Britain and France. The Communists and their supporters advanced the view that this was the best way of winning the war against the fascist military. Much of the historical debate on the role of Communism in the Spanish revolution and civil war has focused on Stalin’s geopolitical designs. The Soviet Union had only just recently begun to emerge from international isolation, joining the League of Nations in 1934. The attempt of the Communists’ to assuage the fears of the British, American and French capitalist “democracies” was not only a tactic for obtaining arms shipments but also fit in with Stalin’s fears of German militarism, and his desire to either enter into a military pact with the western “democracies” or else draw them into a conflict with the fascist powers.

But the PCE developed its own social base in Spain during the civil war. What was the real social meaning of the Spanish Communist Party for Spain? To answer this question, we need to look at the class structure of modern capitalism. In the 19th century Marx saw in capitalism mainly a bipolar struggle between capital and labor. However, since the end of the 19th century, the emergence of the state-regulated, corporate form of capitalism brought with it the emergence of a new main class, which I call the coordinator class(48). Once capitalist ventures had become too large for the entrepreneurs to manage themselves, the capitalists had to concede a realm of power to hierarchies of managers and professionals, in the corporations and the state. The power of the coordinator class is not based on ownership but on a relative monopolization of levers of decision-making and other empowering forms of work. The coordinator class have their own class interests. Moreover, this class has the ability to be a ruling class. The path pioneered by the Bolshevik Party in the Russian revolution was their use of the state to construct a new economic system in which the coordinator class rules, without capitalists.

Limiting our focus to the class dimension of social transformation, there are two different types of anti-capitalist revolution that are possible. A proletarian revolution is a process that, if successful, unravels the structures of class power of the capitalists and coordinators so that there is no longer a class that dominates and exploits the working class. A coordinatorist revolution, however, is a trajectory of change that, if successful, dislodges the capitalists from their dominant position but empowers the coordinator class as the new dominating group. The working class remains a subordinate and exploited group. The PCE’s trajectory in Spain is an example of what I call Left coordinatorism — the pursuit of strategies and programs that empower the coordinator class, under anti-capitalist or Left rhetoric. Left coordinatorism is the last defense of the class system in a social environment where a working class movement is threatening its survival. The empowerment of the coordinator class was clear in the strategy of the PCE: the campaign to rebuild the state apparatus; the campaign to build up a hierarchical army and police and recruit the officer corps to the party; the campaign to recruit, and defend the interests of, the middle strata of Spanish society; and the moves during the war towards nationalization and state control of collectivized industries.

The Spanish Communists had a concept of revolution in Spain occurring in stages. The immediate struggle was a “bourgeois democratic” stage. This notion of stages was clearly expressed by Georgi Dimitrov, secretary of the Communist International, at a meeting of the international held on July 23, 1936: “We should not, at the present stage, assign the task [to the Spanish Communists] of creating soviets and try to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat in Spain. That would be a fatal mistake. Therefore we must say: act in the guise of defending the Republic; do not abandon the politics of the democratic regime in Spain at this point.When our positions have been strengthened, we can go further.” (emphasis added)(49)

There was an international geopolitical struggle between the Soviet coordinator elite and the capitalist imperialist powers. Capitalist imperialism needs to have as much of the planet as possible open to penetration and exploitation by peripatetic private capital. Any revolution — whether coordinatorist, nationalist, or proletarian — that “takes out” areas of the world from accessibility to imperialist capital will weaken world capitalism and, for that reason, will tend to be opposed by the capitalist imperialist powers. For the same reason, any coordinatorist revolution would be in the interests of the Soviet coordinator elite.

The slogan of defending the “bourgeois democratic Republic” had two meanings for the Spanish Communists. First, it was under this slogan that the Communist Party in Spain worked to recruit members of the small business and coordinator classes, by defending their interests.

The second meaning of the PCE’s defense of the “bourgeois republic” was their campaign to rebuild the Republican state apparatus. The Communist Party’s long-term revolutionary strategy was permeationist. With the rebuilding of a hierarchical army and police machine, the Communists would work to capture control of the officer positions. Their aim was to use this as the means to eventually take state power in Spain.

At the end of September, the Popular Front government began the process of creating a new national police force, called the National Republican Guard, with 28,000 members by December. At the same time, a huge force of 40,000 customs and border police was created under the direction of Dr. Juan Negrín, a social-democrat and professor of physiology from a wealthy family. In November, the government decided to replace the worker militias with a conventional top-down army. The Communist Party was able to gain control of the new academy created to train officers. The party also controlled the new Commissariat of War which was set up to exercise political control over the army through a network of political commissars. The Communists controlled the flow of newspapers to the troops at the front. Communists put great pressure on officers to take a party card. Those that didn’t were undermined. The PCE demoralized the army by “acting with the wildest sectarianism,” a Left Socialist member of the Unified Socialist Youth recalled(50).

The PCE in July of ’36 started from a weak position. It had less than 40,000 members in Spain, and very little support within the Spanish working class. The Communists used several tactics to overcome this weak position. First, they pursued a strategy of cannibalizing the Socialist Party base. A number of the leaders of the socialist youth organization (including Santiago Carillo) were taken on tours in Russia and wined and dined. These secret Communists negotiated a merger between the Socialist and Communist youth organizations, creating the Unified Socialist Youth (Juventud Socialista Unificada — JSU). The merger deal had stipulated that the politics of the JSU would be decided at a congress. The Socialist youth group was larger than the Communist youth organization and contained many followers of the Caballero-oriented left-wing of the Socialist Party. The Left Socialists were prevented from gaining control of the JSU by simply not holding the promised congress. The Catalan Communists had gained control of the Socialist Party section in Catalonia through a similar merger tactic. In the fall of 1936 Communist leaders tried to persuade Largo Caballero to agree to a merger of the Communist and Socialist parties. By then he saw what the result of this policy had been and refused.

Land-owning farmers, shopkeepers, owners of small- to medium-sized businesses, managers and white collar workers had been the social base of the Esquerra in Catalonia. These middle strata were often frightened by the expropriation of businesses and buildings, and union management of industry. In other countries threatened by proletarian revolution, these social strata have become the mass base for fascism. But in Catalonia the middle strata were anti-fascist because they were Catalan nationalists. The Communists were successful at recruiting these Republican middle strata throughout the anti-fascist zone because the Communists appeared to be a much tougher and more disciplined defender of their class interests than the old Republican parties.

The first fight between the PSUC and the CNT in Catalonia was over a proposed law to legalize the expropriations of businesses. This fight took place in October, after the CNT joined the Generalitat. According to Andreu Capdevila, an anarchist textile worker.

“The PSUC and the Esquerra fought extremely hard to reduce the number of firms liable for collectivization while the CNT-FAI held out for the most radical decree possible. The reason the CNT agreed to collectivization was that we could not socialize, as was our aim. The workers had taken over the factories…but the victory was not exclusively the CNT’s. We couldn’t take over and control the whole economy.”(51) The Communists were most opposed to union socialization of the economy, the process of linking together the entire economy independent of the state. Preserving privately owned businesses was a way of blocking union socialization. The law that was passed only legalized expropriation of firms with 100 or more workers, or firms with 50 to 100 workers if 75 percent of the workers voted to do so. In practice the CNT simply ignored the fact that this was inconsistent with the expropriations of large numbers of smaller businesses they had carried out. The PSUC effort to block moves beyond the market economy was a tactic that strengthened professionals and managers as well as the small business owners.

The PSUC also organized a union of small business owners and shopkeepers, Gremios y Entidades de Pequenos Comerciantes e Industriales (Small Commercial and Industrial Businesses — GEPCI). By the spring of 1937 the UGT in Catalonia had mushroomed to 350,000 members (including 18,000 in GEPCI), nearly as large as the 400,000-member CNT. A lot of this growth was based on the PSUC organizing of the middle strata of the population. The Communists had built a powerful counter-weight to the worker revolution in Catalonia.

A third reason for growth of the Communist Party during the war was the prestige and influence derived from Soviet arms shipments to the Republican government, and the arrival of the International Brigades during the battle of Madrid in October-November, 1936. At the end of September, 1936, Lluis Companys and Buenaventura Durruti had visited Largo Caballero in Madrid to try to get a commitment of part of Spain’s gold reserves to provide resources for the Catalan war industries and militias. Caballero initially agreed to this, but was persuaded to change his mind by Juan Negrín. On September 13th, Caballero agreed to let Negrín send the gold reserves wherever he wanted. At this time Spain had the fourth-largest gold reserves in the world, worth about $800 million ($11 billion in today’s money). The Communists persuaded Negrín to ship 70 percent of the gold reserves to Russia. The Spanish were given verbal assurances that the gold could be re-exported any time they wished. Once the gold arrived in Moscow, however, Stalin commented that “the Spaniards will never see their gold again, just as one cannot see one’s own ears.”

The transfer of the gold to Russia was extremely damaging to the Spanish economy and the anti-fascist war effort. When word got out that the Spanish peseta was no longer backed by the huge Spanish gold reserve, the value of the peseta fell sharply on the foreign currency market. By December the Spanish currency lost half its value. This caused a big rise in the cost of imports, thus undermining anti-fascist Spain’s ability to sustain the war effort(52). Hitler, Mussolini, and the fascist regime in Portugal all provided military support to the Spanish fascist army. In Arms for Spain British researcher Gerald Howson documents in detail the arms shipments provided to both sides in the civil war. Howson shows that the fascist military received far more arms than did the anti-fascist side. The Russians sent far less war material to Spain than has been previously thought. They sent very few new weapons. Most was old, obsolete stuff.

It became very difficult for the Spanish anti-fascists to obtain arms at any price due to an embargo implemented by France, Britain and the USA. An entire system of certificates for military goods was set up to track arms shipments throughout the world. The FBI invaded warehouses in Mexico to capture ID numbers of weapons as part of the American participation in the embargo effort. The New Deal in the USA had been initially inclined to allow shipments of arms to the anti-fascist side in Spain. An intensive lobbying campaign organized by the Catholic bishops led to American support for the so-called “Non-Intervention” pact (despite the fact that the Basque Roman Catholic Church supported the anti-fascist side). In May, 1938, Joseph Kennedy led another Catholic lobbying effort that successfully stopped an attempt by liberal congressmen to repeal American participation in the embargo(53). Spanish Republican agents had to provide huge bribes anywhere they went in the world to get arms. The “Non-intervention” pact made the Spanish anti-fascists even more dependent on the Soviet Union.

Sending the gold to Spain gave the Soviet regime control over the flow of arms in Spain. For example, late in 1937 Garcia Oliver approached Juan Negrín with a proposal to organize a guerrilla army in the mountains of Andalusia. Most of Andalusia had been overrun by the fascist army in the early weeks of the civil war but it was believed that thousands of anti-fascists were hiding out in the mountains. Garcia Oliver wanted arms and supplies for an organizing group of about 200 who would filter into the mountains. This core group would then organize an army that would harass the fascist forces from behind their lines. Negrín initially agreed to this. But the Soviet representatives refused to authorize the arms because they didn’t want a guerrilla army controlled by the anarchists.

And sending the gold to Russia only made it easier for Stalin to rob the Spaniards. The Soviets faked the prices of arms by creating a special exchange rate, favorable to themselves, for the arms deals. The Russians swindled Spain out of $50 million on the sale of two airplanes alone. Writes Howson: “Of all the swindles, cheatings, robberies and betrayals the Republicans had to put up with from governments, officials and arms traffickers all over the world, [the]…behaviour by Stalin and the high officials of the Soviet nomenklatura is…the most squalid, the most treacherous and the most indefensible.”(54)

by Tom Wetzel Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:48

“The Spanish Kronstadt”

By early 1937 the Communists felt strong enough to make moves towards obtaining hegemony in Spain. The PCE had 230,000 members by March, and the Communist-controlled Unified Socialist Youth had another 250,000 members(55). During this same period the FAI’s membership grew to about 160,000.

The Communist intention to move against the worker revolution was made clear in Pravda in December, 1936: “As for Catalonia, the purging of the Trotskyists and the Anarcho-Syndicalists has begun, it will be conducted with the same energy with which it was conducted in the USSR.” Joan Domenech, secretary of the CNT glass workers union, had been in charge of food supply in the Generalitat government. On January 7th, the CNT-controlled supply organization was dissolved by orders of the Generalitat. Responsibility for food was transferred from Domenech to the PSUC. The PSUC put the free market and local businesses in charge — a move that strengthened GEPCI. The result was a big increase in food prices, due to hoarding and shortages. In the Communist press, the collectives were blamed.

On January 23rd, the UGT of Catalonia, now controlled by the Communists, held a “congress” of landowning farmers in Catalonia. This was basically a propaganda stunt against the agricultural collectives. Agitation by the Communists led to an armed uprising by farmers in Tarragona province, resulting in a nasty clash with the asaltos and the Control Patrols (militia police formed after July 19th 1936). The conflict escalated when Rodriguez Salas, a new pro-Communist chief of police, began moves to disarm civilians in Barcelona — an attack on the CNT neighborhood defense groups. These conflicts led to a Generalitat decree dissolving the Control Patrols on March 4th.

In November, 1936, when the CNT joined the Popular Front government, Garcia Oliver became minister of justice. This put him in charge of the Spanish prison system. In October a thousand right-wing prisoners in Madrid jails had been taken by prison guards to the edge of town and executed, without authorization. To prevent abuses of this sort, Garcia Oliver appointed an anarchist, Melchor Rodriguez, head of prisons in Madrid. Meanwhile, the Communists had gained control of the revolutionary government in Madrid, the Madrid Defense Junta. On April 20th, 1937, Rodriguez revealed that a secret Communist prison had been discovered in Madrid. The nephew of a high official in the PSOE was being detained in that prison, and a number of Socialists had been tortured there. This scandal led the Caballero government to dissolve the Madrid Defense Junta. Not long after this, the PCE changed its tune about Caballero. In early 1936 the Communist press had touted Caballero as the “Spanish Lenin.” By the spring of 1937 they were describing him as a senile old fool. On April 25th, a PSUC activist, Roldán Cortdada, a former treintista, was assassinated in Bajo Llobregat — an anarchist stronghold. A leading anarchist activist in Bajo Llobregat was accused but no proof was ever provided. The funeral of Cortada was the occasion for a massive street demonstration — a Communist show of force.

In an atmosphere of increasing tension, the conflict between the Communists and CNT exploded on May 3rd when a large force of Communist-controlled police attacked the worker-controlled telephone exchange building in Barcelona, with coordinated assaults on telephone exchanges elsewhere. The telephone system in Spain was being run by a CNT-controlled worker federation. CNT workers had been listening in on calls of government officials in order to keep tabs on them. This was used by the Communists as a pretext for trying to seize the telephone system. The PSUC was not against the practice of listening in on calls, however. As a close associate of PSUC leader Juan Comorera later recalled: “Of course, had the PSUC been in a position to listen in on telephone conversations, it would have done so also. The party always wanted to be well-informed.”(56) It was a question of power.

Word of the attack on the telephone exchange spread rapidly. Within hours the CNT neighborhood defense committees went into action against the Communist-controlled police and began building barricades. The POUM and the Libertarian Youth joined the fray and soon armed worker groups were in control of most of the city and the suburbs. A general strike spread throughout the Barcelona area. The government forces retained control only in some parts of the central area.

This whole fight was a fairly spontaneous reaction of the working class against an armed power play by the Communists. The regional and national committees of the CNT tried to negotiate an end to the fighting, and prohibited CNT army units from intervening. On May 4th the CNT appealed via loudspeakers and the union radio for an end to fighting and for everyone to return to work. Both Federica Montseny and Garcia Oliver, anarchist ministers in the national government, appealed over the radio for an end to the fighting. A member of the POUM described what happened at a barricade in reaction to Montseny’s radio speech:

“The CNT militants were so furious they pulled out their pistols and shot the radio. It sounds incredible but it happened in front of my eyes. They were absolutely furious, and yet they obeyed. They might be anarchists, but when it came to their own organization they had tremendous discipline.”(57) On May 6th workers began to dismantle the barricades. The PSUC immediately took advantage of the situation to seize the telephone exchange. The CNT leading committees seemed to believe that everything would return to the situation that existed before the fighting, now that “our members have shown their teeth.” It didn’t play out that way.

A large force of heavily armed paramilitary police were sent to Barcelona to re-impose government authority. Large caches of weapons were seized from the CNT. On May 11th, the mutilated bodies of twelve young anarchists were dumped at a cemetery near Ripollet. On May 5th, the Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri, a philosophy professor and exile from Italian fascism, was murdered by Communists, along with another Italian anarchist.

At a cabinet meeting of the Popular Front government on May 15th, the Communists proposed a motion banning the CNT and the POUM. Caballero responded that this could not be legally done, and that he would not allow it as long as he remained head of the government. The two Communist ministers then walked out of the meeting. When Caballero said, “The Council of Ministers continues,” the social-democrats, Republicans, and Basque Nationalists also walked out, backing up the Communists. Only the three Left Socialists and the four CNT ministers supported Caballero. The central government and the PCE were the main victors from the May struggle. The CNT was ousted from both the national government and the Generalitat.

Soon, the central government deprived the Generalitat of control over its local police and eventually repealed the autonomy of Catalonia. Companys and the Esquerra were completely marginalized. Caballero was replaced with Juan Negrín — a social-democrat who was sympathetic to the Communists. The Communists moved against the Left Socialists, using the police to seize the main newspapers controlled by the Caballero faction of the PSOE.

Negrín approved the repression against the POUM that Caballero refused to do. Soon, Andreu Nin, the POUM leader, was arrested, tortured and assassinated by Communist agents. On August 15th, a decree was issued authorizing the Military Investigation Service (Servicio Intelligencia Militar — SIM). SIM was a secret political police, riddled with Soviet GPU (military secret police) agents. There were 6,000 SIM agents in Madrid alone.

Bill Herrick was a member of the American Communist Party from New York City who served in the Abraham Lincoln battalion in Spain. In his memoir, Herrick describes how he received angry stares as he walked around Barcelona in his International Brigades uniform in late 1937…and people spit on him. He reports that he was forced by a party boss to witness shootings of young revolutionaries in a SIM prison. He describes the execution of a young girl who shouted Viva la revolución! before a SIM thug fired a bullet through her brain. The murder of that girl haunted Herrick and led to his eventual break with the American Communist Party after his return to New York City(58). The Popular Front strategy was based on the idea of trying to get the capitalist imperialist powers to allow arms shipments to the anti-fascist side in Spain. This was not a very realistic strategy. The main worry of the British elite was Bolshevism, not fascism. That’s why the British government in the ‘30s made endless concessions to Hitler. The Popular Front strategy led naturally to viewing the struggle as a conventional war. But in conventional military terms, the fascists had the advantage. They had a trained army and access to more arms, via Hitler and Mussolini. The failure to organize guerrilla war behind fascist lines derived from this picture of the struggle as a conventional war. But guerrilla warfare would have made use of the anti-fascist side’s advantage in popular support to tie down large portions of the fascist army.

No appeal was made on a class basis to workers in other countries because the Popular Front strategy did not portray the fight as essentially a struggle for working class power. As George Orwell wrote: “Once the war had been narrowed down to a ‘war for democracy’ it became impossible to make any large-scale appeal for working class aid abroad…The way in which the working class in the democratic countries could really have helped Spanish comrades was by industrial action — strikes and boycotts. No such thing ever began to happen.”(59)

The main advantage the anti-fascist side had was the revolutionary enthusiasm of the people. Communist maneuvers to gain control of the army, and curtail or destroy worker management of industry, contributed to demoralization.

Forced Collectivization?

In August, 1937, the Negrín government decreed the abolition of the CNT-controlled Defense Council of Aragon. Army troops under the command of the Communist general Enrique Líster broke up collectives, gave land back to landowners, and arrested 600 CNT members (and killed some of them).

To justify the rampage in Aragon, the Communists accused the anarchists of operating a forced collectivization regime. They claimed they were there to liberate the campesinos. The anarchists, for their part, portrayed the collectivization of the agrarian economy of Aragon as the product of local initiative, a movement of emancipation from rural employers and exploitative landlords. There is evidence to support both pictures. According to Macario Royo, a campesino member of the CNT regional committee in Aragon, some element of coercion was inevitable in a revolution. The dominating classes will inevitably oppose the liberation of the working class. But how far should this coercion extend? Communist policy on agriculture had been a source of conflict with sectors of both the CNT and the UGT Land Workers Federation (FNTT).

The main dispute was over the policy towards the large- to medium-sized landowners who didn’t flee in reaction to the army coup. These people had enough land to hire laborers to work for them. They were the equivalent to the kulak class in the Russian revolution of 1917. In most of the anti-fascist zone both the FNTT and CNT usually took the position that landowning campesinos should only be allowed to retain as much land as their own family could farm. The aim of the CNT and FNTT was to do away with the hiring of wage labor in the countryside.

But the PCE was opposed to expropriation of any landowners who hadn’t fled. The more prosperous land-owning farmers were usually right-wingers, and were sometimes the old right-wing caciques (political bosses) in the villages. The Communist policy of defending them — even to the point of helping them take back land that had been collectivized — strengthened the right-wing element in the countryside.

Actual CNT practice of rural collectivization differed by area. In Andalusia, the CNT’s policy was the same as that of the PCE. The CNT in Andalusia expropriated no land at all. They set up collectives on estates of owners who fled, and using the small plots that campesinos voluntarily brought with them(60).

The dispute about Aragon was also about the extent to which small-holding campesinos who did not hire wage-workers were forced to merge their small plots into collectives. Doing this was contrary to Kropotkin’s advice in The Conquest of Bread) and was not pursued by the CNT in other areas of the anti-fascist zone. Saturnino Carod was the son of a landless farm laborer in Aragon and the leader of a CNT militia column. Carod was well aware of how the campesinos were attached to their little plots of land. “It’s a part of his being. He’s a slave to it. To deprive him of it is like tearing his heart from his body. He must not be forced to give it up to join a collective,” Carod said(61). But Carod’s advice was not always heeded in Aragon. The village of Yagüés is an example. In Blood of Spain, Ronald Fraser quotes a couple from Yagüés — both staunch CNT supporters. The man said he would give his life to defend the CNT. When the collective was set up, they were happy to get out from under the major landowners who had been grinding them down.

But they described the town as being managed by a committee of 20 men who went around with pistols on their waists and did no work. None of the landowning campesinos were allowed to stay out of the collective. Farmers who tried to leave couldn’t buy fertilizer or seed since money had been abolished and the resources were controlled by the collective. The committee running the town were also lining their pockets. All the best food ended up in their houses, the CNT couple alleged. The committeemen rode around in cars that had been expropriated from well-to-do families. Unlike the other women in the village, their wives were also exempt from work. Village assemblies were not held frequently and there was no procedure for recall of the committee members. The CNT couple said there was great discontent. They believed that another revolution would have been needed to get rid of this incipient managerial elite(62).

Communist propaganda portrayed all of Aragon as being like that village of Yagüés. In fact, there were other towns where the situation was very different.

Mas de las Matas was a prosperous town of small-holding farmers in Aragon, with about 2,500 residents. Before the war, the CNT union had about 200 members. The anarchists initiated the collectivization of the town by calling an assembly of the residents. The assembly elected an anti-fascist committee — half were CNT members and half were supporters of the Left Republican party. The assembly and elected committee became both the new government of the town and a means of socializing the town’s economy. This is an example of what the Spanish anarchists called a “free municipality.” This is one of the few places where the anarchists actually constructed this type of geographic, assembly-based governance structure during the revolution. Numerous farmers brought their small plots into the town collective, agreeing to work the lands collectively. An advantage of this was that it made it more feasible to use machinery, which the town bought for use in the farming operation. The anarchist secretary of the collective was a 26-year old self-employed cabinet-maker. He brought his own tools into the collective. The collective controlled all services. The political power exercised by the town collective is illustrated by the fact that they banned the hiring of anyone to work for wages. They also banned gambling and sale of alcohol.(63) A group of 50 landowning farm families in the village refused to join the collective and joined the UGT for protection. However, not all of the wealthier farmers opposed the collective. When one of the most well-off men in the village was asked by a visitor why he had joined the collective, he replied: “Why? Because this is the most human system there is.”

The UGT in Aragon did not always oppose collectivization. In the village of Andorra, a majority of the collective members belonged to the UGT(64).

When Líster’s troops invaded Aragon in August, 1937, an assembly of residents was called in Mas de las Matas and, with police presiding, anyone who wanted to quit the collective was allowed to do so. The membership in the collective dropped to 1,500. Thus 60 percent of the residents still voluntarily supported the collective, despite the threatening presence of Communist troops.

The collectivization in Aragon had a dual purpose. To the extent the initiative was local, the motivation was community self-management and equality. But the labor army in Aragon, only a few kilometers from the villages, did not have a very reliable line of supply to Catalonia and Valencia where the militias had been formed. The Aragon villages also had the role of providing food for the labor army.

Often, money was abolished and a system of rationing imposed. By controlling the consumption of the local population, a surplus could be generated to supply the revolutionary army. Working for the anti-fascist militia for free was a matter of pride for the supporters of the Left in the villages, and a source of resentment among the village right-wingers.

But the abolition of money was itself another source of discontent among the campesinos. According to the CNT president of the village collective in Alcorisa, the campesinos didn’t like the idea of taking things for free from the common store because they felt it was like begging(65). They believed they earned a right to a certain level of consumption through their work, and that this should be expressed in a money income.

The anarchist secretary of the successful collective at Mas de las Matas said that the abolition of money “turned out to be one of our biggest mistakes.” He believed that it would have been better to pay people for work, and provide additional allowances for the needs of dependents. If able-bodied adults earn an entitlement to consume based on work, this allows each individual to tailor their requests for products to their own desires. Without that, there is only the set of things offered to everyone by the collective. Absence of money led to inefficiencies like people throwing away bread because it was free.

Saturnino Carod believed that the abolition of money had been based on a confusion of money with capital. He insisted that there was a need for a system of social accounting(66). Capital is a social relation of domination, exercised through market purchase of means of production and hiring of workers, to make a profit. Money need not imply the continued existence of that capitalist economic arrangement. The real aim of the Communists wasn’t the destruction of the collectives. The Communists had helped to form agricultural collectives in other areas. The Communists’ aim in Aragon was the destruction of CNT power. While the Communist troops were attacking the CNT in Aragon, the CNT did not allow CNT army units in the area to intervene. The effect of this whole episode was the undermining of morale. This contributed to the fascist army’s conquest of Aragon a few months later.

by Tom Wetzel Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:51

The Friends of Durruti

During the May Days fight between the Communist-controlled police and their working class adversaries in Barcelona, an alternative to the CNT leadership’s policy of Popular Front collaboration was proposed by a FAI group, Agrupación Los Amigos de Durutti (The Friends of Durruti Group). The Amigos distributed a leaflet during the fighting calling for the CNT to overthrow the Generalitat, replacing it with a revolutionary council (junta) in Catalonia controlled by the CNT unions. Their leaflet also called for complete socialization of the economy and disarming of the police.

The Amigos had been organized in March 1937 on the initiative of CNT militia members who opposed the creation of the new hierarchical Republican army. The group was named for Durruti because of his last fight in the CNT in October, 1936. Horacio Prieto, wanting to make use of Durruti’s popularity, had tried to get him to be one of the CNT ministers in the Popular Front government. Durruti refused. “When the workers expropriate the bourgeoisie, when one attacks foreign property, when public order is in the hands of the workers, when the militia is controlled by the unions, when, in fact, one is in the process of making a revolution from the bottom up,” said Durruti, this is simply incompatible with maintaining Republican state legality(67). The Amigos were libertarian syndicalists trying to revive the Defense Council program that the CNT had advocated in September-October 1936. Two of the leading activists in the Amigos were Liberto Callejas and Jaime Balius. In September and October 1936 both Calletas and Balius had been staff members of Solidaridad Obrera during the campaign for the Defense Council proposal. In the actual events in May of 1937, the Amigos did not have sufficient weight in the CNT to bring about a change of direction. The Amigos had some influence among the CNT militia units and the CNT neighborhood defense groups. But the main weight in the CNT in Catalonia were the local union militants, the delegados on the local labor councils and the workplace councils in the collectivized industries. If the viewpoint of the Amigos had prevailed among the labor councils, they could have gained control of a regional plenary and ousted the Popular Front collaborationist regional committee. When people find themselves pursuing a course of action, they want to feel that they are justified in doing so. This means there is a tendency for people to find justifications for their actions. By May of 1937 leading anarcho-syndicalists had been following the Popular Front strategy and occupying positions of hierarchical authority in the government and in the army for some time. This was bound to change their outlook. A good example is Joan Garcia Oliver. In July and August of 1936 he had been a champion of the CNT “going for broke,” overthrowing the Generalitat, and taking power in its own hands. By March, 1937 his viewpoint had changed; he had become a defender of the Popular Front coalition. This change was shown dramatically by his conduct during the May events, opposing any attempt to broaden the struggle into an attempt to seize power for the unions. In their main pamphlet, the Amigos criticized the CNT’s failure to take political power in July of 1936:

“What happened had to happen. The CNT…did not have a concrete program. We had no idea where we were going....When an organization’s whole existence has been spent preaching revolution, it has an obligation to act whenever a favorable set of circumstances arises. And in July the occasion did present itself. The CNT ought to have leapt into the driver’s seat in the country....In this way we would have won the war and saved the revolution. But [the CNT] did the opposite. It collaborated with the bourgeoisie in the affairs of state, precisely when the state was crumbling away.”(68) In addition to the advocacy of the union-controlled national and regional Defense Councils, the Amigos also advocated the formation of the “free municipalities” — governance structures based on neighborhood or village assemblies of residents — which the CNT had advocated in the program adopted at Zaragoza in May, 1936. Balius called the free municipalities “an authentic revolutionary government.” The Amigos also held to the syndicalist program of socialization of the economy from below through union management.

According to Balius, the workers’ initiative in the May events in Barcelona showed “the proletariat’s unshakeable determination to place a workers’ leadership in charge of the armed struggle, the economy and the entire existence of the country. Which is to say (for any anarchist not afraid of the words) that the proletariat was fighting for the taking of power which would have come to pass through the destruction of the old bourgeois instruments and erection in their place of a new structure based on the committees that surfaced in July [1936].”(69) From a social anarchist point of view, a key issue about the proposed Defense Councils would be their accountability to the assemblies at the base. The Amigos proposed that the Defense Councils be elected by the union assemblies. But what about the making of policy? A possible solution here would be the regional and national People’s Congresses proposed in the CNT’s Zaragoza program of May, 1936. These would be deliberative bodies, made up of delegates elected by the base assemblies, and with major issues sent back to the base assemblies for decision. The CNT also proposed that the Defense Councils be prohibited from intervening in management of the economy, which would be controlled by a system of worker-managed industrial federations and social planning. On this scenario, it could be argued that the polity would no longer be a state because it would not be sufficiently separated from the mass of the people as to serve the essential state function of defending the interests of a class dominating and exploiting the working class. Thus it seems to me that the syndicalist proposal for Defense Councils and a unified and a union-controlled people’s militia was a tactic at least potentially consistent with social anarchism.

How would this have differed from the Leninist concept of “taking power”? I think the difference is clearest if we look at the debate in the Russian Communist party in 1921. At that time, Nicholai Bukharin, Alexandra Kollontai and a number of other Bolsheviks proposed a system of management boards for the Russian economy elected by the unions. Lenin denounced this as an “anarcho-syndicalist deviation” because it would give economic power to the “non-party masses” who made up 90 percent of the membership of the unions. By the logic of Lenin’s position, he would have to denounce the CNT Defense Council proposal because it would give economic, political and armed power to the “non-party masses” in the unions.

For José Peirats, however, the “strength of the anarchosyndicalists” after July 19th 1936 lay in the dispersed pattern of power in the anti-fascist zone, broken up into a myriad of local and regional committees(70). Peirats, who was active in the Libertarian Youth in Catalonia, opposed the CNT joining the Popular Front government but also opposed the alternative of replacing the Republican central government with a CNT-UGT national defense council. Peirats said the Defense Council proposal was “just a government under another name.” But couldn’t that be said of any polity that would provide overall governance for Spain as a whole? Peirats was editor of a journal in Catalonia called Acracia — the name means “No power.” It seems that Peirats’ acracista anarchism was opposed to any sort of overarching polity or governing structure for Spain.

But this was simply not possible. A unified command was needed in the armed fight against the fascist military. The workers of the CNT and the UGT would insist on unity in the struggle. There were only two ways this could be achieved. Either the CNT took the initiative to replace the existing state apparatus in Catalonia and at the national level, uniting the workers of the CNT and UGT into a working class-controlled governing power, or else the Communists would be successful in uniting the population behind a rebuilding of the state apparatus and a hierarchical army. This was the fundamental dilemma that faced the CNT after July 19th 1936.

If the CNT had overthrown the Generalitat and created a structure of national and regional CNT-UGT governing councils and a unified people’s militia, controlled by the unions, the CNT could have blocked the Communist proposals for a hierarchical army and for sending the gold to Russia. The CNT could have blocked the PCE’s strategy for gaining state power. By failing to pursue this path, the CNT made the Popular Front strategy inevitable, and thus facilitated the Communists’ growing power. Given the fascist side’s superiority arms supplies, creating a working class-controlled polity in Spain was not a guarantee of victory. But it would have improved the chances of success.

To their credit, Balius and the Amigos saw that libertarian syndicalism presupposes a polity — a structure of political self-governance — to replace the state, if the working class is to be successful at liberating itself.

Traditional anarchism was ambiguous or inconsistent on the question of what replaces the state. There was a lack of clarity about the need for a new type of polity to perform the necessary political functions — making the basic rules (legislative role), adjudicating accusations of criminal conduct and disputes between people, and defending the basic social arrangement against internal or external attack and enforcing the basic rules. The political functions of society cannot be done away with any more than social production could be. But the political functions can be carried on by a structure of popular self-governance, rooted in the participatory democracy of assemblies in the communities and workplaces.

by Tom Wetzel Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:57

Notes

1. Abel Paz, Durruti: The People Armed, p. 181.

2. Alberto Balcells, Cataluña contemporanea II (1900-1936), p. 17, cited in Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War.

3. Colin M. Winston, Workers and the Right in Spain, 1900-1936.

4. Information on the Barcelona rent strike of 1931 is from Nick Rider, “The Practice of Direct Action: The Barcelona Rent Strike of 1931” in For Anarchism: History, Theory, and Practice, David Goodway, ed.

5. Antony Beevor, The Spanish Civil War, p. 29.

6. Jerome Mintz, The Anarchists of Casas Viejas, p. 268.

7. Quoted in Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War, p. 544.

8. Victor Alba and Stephen Schwartz, Spanish Marxism versus Soviet Communism: A History of the POUM.

9. Diego Abad de Santillan, El organismo económico de la revolución (translated into English under the title After the Revolution).

10. The idea of participatory planning was first developed in the 1970s by a number of radical economists. The most well-known version is the “participatory ecoomics” model developed by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel. An early version was “Participatory Planning” in Socialist Visions, Steve Rosskamm Shalom, ed.

11. Excerpts from the Zaragoza congress vision document are translated into English in Robert Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, Volume One, pp. 48-67.

12. Peter Kropotkin, “Modern Science and Anarchism” in Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets: A Collection of Writings by Peter Kropotkin, Roger N. Baldwin, ed., pp. 183-184.

13. In the words of Cesar M. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas y el poder, p. 92.

14. Dionisius Ridruejo, interviewed in the early 1970s, Fraser, op cit, p. 320.

15. Fraser, op cit, p. 71.

16. Fraser, op cit, p. 110.

17. Abel Paz, op cit, p. 213.

18. According to Ricardo Sanz, interview in the 1970s, quoted in Fraser, op cit, p. 110.

19. This debate is described in Fraser, op cit, p. 112.

20. This account of the debate is from Juan Garcia Oliver, “Wrong Steps: Errors in the Spanish Revolution,” Mick Parker, translator. (This pamphlet is an English translation of excerpts from Garcia Oliver’s memoir, Eco de los pasos.)

21. On the composition of the Anti-fascist Militia Committee, Cesar M. Lorenzo, op cit, p. 86.

22. José Peirats, Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, p. 161. (This is a translation of Los anarquistas en la crisis española.)

23. Cesar M. Lorenzo, op cit, p. 98.

24. Cesar M. Lorenzo, ibid, p. 180.

25. Cesar M. Lorenzo, op cit, pp. 180-181.

26. José Peirats, op cit, p. 163.

27. Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck, and Grigory Sevostianov, eds., Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War, p. 48.

28. Interview with Eduardo de Guzmán, early 1970s, in Fraser, op cit, p. 186 and pp. 335-336.

29. José Peirats, op cit, pp. 185-186.

30. Agustin Guillamón, The Friends of Durruti Group: 1937-1939, p. 24.

31. Burnett Bolloten, The Grand Camouflage: The Communist Conspiracy in the Spanish Civil War, pp. 43-44.

32. Interview in the early ‘70s, Fraser, op cit, p. 220.

33. Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, pp. 253-264.

34. Gaston Leval, ibid, pp. 240-245.

35. Quoted in Burnett Bolloten, op cit, p. 50.

36. Quoted in Fraser, op cit, 221.

37. Fraser, op cit, p. 223.

38. Augustin Souchy, Nacht über Spanien, excerpt translated in Sam Dolgoff, ed., The Anarchist Collectives: Workers’ Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution 1936-1939, pp. 93-94.

39. Fraser, op cit, p. 233.

40. Gaton Leval, op cit, pp. 264-278.

41. Fraser, op cit, p. 212.

42. Quoted in Robert Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, Volume One, p. 487.

43. Quoted in Fraser, op cit, p. 229.

44. Diego Abad de Santillan, statement from December, 1936, appended to the 1937 addition of After the Revolution, p. 121.

45. Quoted in Fraser, op cit, p. 218.

46. Gaston Leval, op cit, pp. 289-295.

47. This information about Mujeres Libres is from Martha A. Ackelsberg, Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women.

48. Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, “A Ticket to Ride: More Locations on the Class Map” in Between Labor and Capital, Pat Walker, ed.

49. Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck, and Grigory Sevostianov, op cit, p. 11.

50. Sócrates Gómez, quoted in Fraser, op cit, p. 333.

51. Quoted in Fraser, op cit, p. 215.

52. Antony Beevor, op cit, p. 124

53. Antony Beevor, ibid, p. 174.

54. Gerald Howson, Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War, p. 151.

55. Report by André Marty to Soviet authorities, March 1937, translated in Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck, and Grigory Sevostianov, op cit, p. 145.

56. Quoted in Fraser, op cit, pp. 377-378.

57. Juan Andrade, quoted in Fraser, op cit, p. 382.

58. Bill Herrick, Jumping the Line.

59. George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, p. 69.

60. Fraser, op cit, p. 371.

61. Quoted in Fraser, op cit, p. 364.

62. Fraser, op cit, pp. 367-369.

63. Gaston Leval, op cit, pp. 136-143.

64. Gaston Leval, op cit, pp. 123.

65. CNT village committee president, quoted in Fraser, op cit, p. 362.

66. Saturnino Carod, quoted in Fraser, op cit, p. 363.

67. Quote from Durruti in The Spanish Civil War: Anarchism in Action, Chap 4 ().

68. The Friends of Durruti Group, Towards a Fresh (translation of Hacía una revolución nueva) ()

69. Jaime Balius, quoted in Agustin Guillamón, op cit, p. 92.

70. José Peirats, op cit, p. 183.

by javier Thu Aug 17, 2006 05:38

Many thanks for your work Tom, left me thinking and that is certainly good. Good thing you mentioned Peirats views too altough i do not agree with you interpretation of them. But lets start the debate!

"How would this have differed from the Leninist concept of “taking power”?"

It seems to me that it is not just how and by whom are people elected to do stuff but what control do all the people in whose behalf is stuff done have over the decissions taken that affect their lives. Leninists also talk about the poeple taking the important decissions, but with an state apparatus, that is, an organization capable of imposing its will to the people with centralized top-downwards decission making, with a hierarchy of officials with authority, a chain of command, it is extremely unlikely that the outcome would differ from the dictatorship in wich the russian revolution degenerated.

the difference between a government and a coordinating body is the voluntary participation in it

If a decission of this National Defense Council (for example, full socialization of land) is taken by majority and applied (forecefully if neccessary) at the local level throughout all the territory, including the villages that oppose it, it is a government (forced collectivization is a clearcut example) and no anarchist could support it without a wrong feeling in the guts (even if it werent a government under some handy definition, it is counterrevolutionary, we cannot expect no new man from fear). Moreover, anarchists oppose it not only because it is plainly wrong, but because it is a downwards spiral towards dictatorship (no matter the beautiful or anarchist sounding words used).

If a decission of this National Defense Council is bounding to all who support that decission (and binding in a moral sense -people are expected to work for it in the most effective and efficient way possible, that is, to fullfill their freely accepted responsibilities-) it is a Federation, this is what anarchists have advocated.

Voluntary militias, a popular army, wichever way you want to call it, has to subordinate itself to the people, it cannot enter a town and say "this is how things are going to be done because it was decided at congress something" and force the people to follow orders at gunpoint, that is not only unanarchist but counterrevolutionary.

The decissions have to be taken by the people affected, with respect for individuals, an we as anarchists have to advocate socialization of the economy under direct democratic control. By trying to be a living example of what we want in our every actions and by clearly and coherently arguing for our views both in means and ends, by word an action.

This does not exclude the need for congresses or conferences (and day to day coordination and as much unity as we can efficiently have) formed by delegates wich will discuss the big issues beforehand to come with the position of the workers in whose behalf he or she talks and collectively decide on an organizational position and appoint a comission to fullfill tasks decided at that congress or conference (as the platform advocates). But that comission has no coercive menas to force those who opposed the majority position to colaborate with it, it has to be their decission (yes, even when for example a levantine agrarian collective decides not to collaborate in the export of oranges and do it on their own, not becuase it is okay with them opposing it, but because the alternative is the way stalin did things in russia under the same situation, forced expropiation under threat fo death and with this the end of all revolutionary hope, freedom, democracy or revolution).

This does not deny the need for unity or coordination, as Durruti said (my translation form Abel Paz Durruti and the Spanish Revolution):

"I think -and everything that is happening around us confirms my thoughts-, that a workers militia cannot be lead by the classical rules of the Army. I consider thus, that discipline, coordination, and the realization of a plan, are indispensable things. But all that cannot be interpreted by the criteria in use in the world we are destroying. We have to build over new bases.

According to me, and according to my compañeros, solidarity between men is the best incentive to wake the individual responsibility that knows how to accept discipline as an act of self-discipline.

War is imposed to us, and the struggle that must rule it differs from the tactic with wich we have lead the one that we have just won, but the end of our combat is the triumph of the revolution. This means not only victory over the enemy, but that that victory must be obtained by a radical change of man. For this change to operate, it is precise that the men learns to live and conducts itslef as a free man, learning in wich his responsibility and personality faculties as owner of its own acts are developed. The worker at work does not only change the forms of matter, but also, through this work, it modifies itslef. the combatant is nothing else but a worker using a rifle as its instrument, and his acts have to tend to the same end as the worker. In the struggle, it cannot behave as a solider wich is ordered, but as a conscious man that knows the trascendence of its act. **I know that obtaining this is not easy, but I also know that what we do not obtain by reasoning we do not obtain it either by force. If our military apparatus of the revolution has to sustain itself by fear, it will happen that we won't have changed anything, but the colour of fear. It is only through liberating itself from fear that society wil be able to edify itself on freedom.**"

Only how we get that unity. And that is, even admitting the arguments fo the platform for tactical and theoretical unity, and collective responsibility (and if its federalism and internal democracy is understood as debating for a common position to apply at the local level instead of a chain of command of the executive comitees, it is then nothing more -nor less- than a good text on anarchist organization of the kind that stresses unity for efectivity, the best kind to me)

I hope this debate to be fruitful and respectful. I hoestly am not sure what to interpret of this National Defense Council or this polity you talk about, so I ask you, what do you have to say about my concerns Tom?

by Tom Wetzel - WSA (personal capacity) Thu Aug 17, 2006 08:51

I think that, to free itself, the working class will have to impose its will against the dominating classes (capitalists and coordinators). That is because most of the members of those classes will oppose working class efforts to remove the class power of capitalists and coordinators. This means that changes they don't like will have to be imposed against their will. I cannot see how the working class could be liberated from the class system otherwise.

In the immediate situation faced by the CNT in Spain they faced a fundamental dilemma: Either the Communists would be successful in carrying out the Popular Front program of uniting the population behind a rebuilding of the state & a conventional top-down army, OR else the CNT would find a way to unite the unions (CNT and UGT, and FOUS in Catalonia) into a governing structure that would replace the state. There was no other possibility. The mass of members in the CNT would insist on unity with the UGT. The state apparatus had great legitimacy in the eyes of the anti-fascist small business and coordinator classes. The Communists were recruiting those classes. If the CNT wanted to avoid reconstruction of the state apparatus and a top-down army, it HAD TO replace the state with a new governance structure in which only the working class, but all of the working class organizations, held power. The proposal they came up with was a federatist system of regional and national Defense Councils. These were basically revolutionary committees.

As I said in the essay, the key question, from a social anarchist point of view, was accountability of the Defense Councils to the assemblies at the base. In the CNT's philosophy and practice, and in its program approved at the Zaragoza Congress in May, 1936, the Defense Councils should be merely administrative committees that get their orders from regional and national congresses of delegates, elected by and accountable to the base assemblies. Because the neighborhood assemblies ("free municipalities") did not yet exist in July-August 1936, the only available base assemblies were the workplace or union assemblies. As i see it, these congresses would have a legislative role in the sense they could make binding rules. That is what it is to be a polity or governance structure. Ultimately the CNT wanted the revolutionary people's army to be controlled by the unions, the mass worker organizations, which would create the worker congresses, and be represented in them. This is actually one of the principles of the 1922 charter of the IWA. One of the basic syndicalist principles is that any armed body required in a revolution must be controlled by the "mass economic organizations of the workers". That's to ensure that, when the dust settles, it is the working class that ends up in control of the society.

When I say that the worker congresses and Defense Councils should "control" the revolutionary militia, I'm not saying this control has to take the form of an internal top-down hierarchy, as in a conventional army. It may be useful to make an analogy with management of industry. In a socialized, self-managed economic system, the workers do not "own" their workplaces, they can't make entirely unilateral decisions in all respects about that workplace because many decisions will affect other people, such as the surrounding community or the customers. These things would be governed through a social plan to which the workers in a particular workplace should be expected to adhere, if they want the facilities to be allocated to them in the future. After all, they don't "own" the place where they work, the entire society does. That is what it is for an economy to be socialized. Now, the same is true in regard to the "people's army." The members of it may make internal decisions concerning their "work" but the aims, what the army is doing, needs to be directed to serve the social purpose; in the case of a proletarian revolution, the purpose is to serve the working class organizations that have set up this army.

by javier Mon Aug 21, 2006 09:00

"I think that, to free itself, the working class will have to impose its will against the dominating classes (capitalists and coordinators). That is because most of the members of those classes will oppose working class efforts to remove the class power of capitalists and coordinators. This means that changes they don't like will have to be imposed against their will. I cannot see how the working class could be liberated from the class system otherwise."

Yes, but one thing is for example workers in a factory deciding in assembly to oust the bosses and start producing self-managedly (a thing we, as anarchists, should undoubtedly support both in the assemblies and in the struggle, while trying to convince the workers to coordinate with other factories and workshops to efficiently socialize the fruits of labour and defend the revolution). Or when workers organize armed patrols and guards to defend against atacks by counter-revolutionaries. That would be out of question, but what is really complicated is when the workers take the wrong decissions (to us, but it could be that they are obviously wrong) regarding their course of action in a factory or locality, and what happens if they are a minority in the larger organization (be it a federation of communes -as bakunin understood communes, that is the grouping of local workers organizations-) or of trade/industrial unions. How does the majority (even an anarchist majority, wich we are far far away of) deal with them. If the majority considers its right to impose its will over the minority (by the use of force if neccessary) it is a government and it has not been because of stubbornness that anarchists have historically opposed to organize or build as the State (that is in a centralist hierarchical way). I am obviously talking about the relationship between those who respect each other's freedom there can be no federalism between those who try to centralize power in their hands and those that want the people to keep power in their hands (anarchists and compañeros to me).

"In the immediate situation faced by the CNT in Spain they faced a fundamental dilemma: Either the Communists would be successful in carrying out the Popular Front program of uniting the population behind a rebuilding of the state & a conventional top-down army, OR else the CNT would find a way to unite the unions (CNT and UGT, and FOUS in Catalonia) into a governing structure that would replace the state."

What would have impeded the communists, socialists and republicans from taking over this organism? What relationship would exist between the different levels of this organizations. I mean, what level's decissions would take preeminence, the highest or the lowest (that is the more directly controled by the people)?, would the autonomy of the organizations participating of this coordinating body be respected?

"There was no other possibility. The mass of members in the CNT would insist on unity with the UGT. The state apparatus had great legitimacy in the eyes of the anti-fascist small business and coordinator classes. The Communists were recruiting those classes. If the CNT wanted to avoid reconstruction of the state apparatus and a top-down army, it HAD TO replace the state with a new governance structure in which only the working class, but all of the working class organizations, held power."

Yes, but how, the means of doing this would make it possible or extremely unlikely for the people, the working class to held power instead of tiny ruling minorities that would establish state capitalism (under wichever name the come un with).

"The proposal they came up with was a federatist system of regional and national Defense Councils. These were basically revolutionary committees."

"As I said in the essay, the key question, from a social anarchist point of view, was accountability of the Defense Councils to the assemblies at the base. In the CNT's philosophy and practice, and in its program approved at the Zaragoza Congress in May, 1936, the Defense Councils should be merely administrative committees that get their orders from regional and national congresses of delegates, elected by and accountable to the base assemblies. Because the neighborhood assemblies ("free municipalities") did not yet exist in July-August 1936, the only available base assemblies were the workplace or union assemblies. As i see it, these congresses would have a legislative role in the sense they could make binding rules. That is what it is to be a polity or governance structure. Ultimately the CNT wanted the revolutionary people's army to be controlled by the unions, the mass worker organizations, which would create the worker congresses, and be represented in them. This is actually one of the principles of the 1922 charter of the IWA. One of the basic syndicalist principles is that any armed body required in a revolution must be controlled by the "mass economic organizations of the workers". That's to ensure that, when the dust settles, it is the working class that ends up in control of the society."

Yes, I agree completly, specially about the part of accountability, the question is how to ensure it. If you answer the questions I ask in this message I will be able to understand you.

"When I say that the worker congresses and Defense Councils should "control" the revolutionary militia, I'm not saying this control has to take the form of an internal top-down hierarchy, as in a conventional army. It may be useful to make an analogy with management of industry. In a socialized, self-managed economic system, the workers do not "own" their workplaces, they can't make entirely unilateral decisions in all respects about that workplace because many decisions will affect other people, such as the surrounding community or the customers. These things would be governed through a social plan to which the workers in a particular workplace should be expected to adhere, if they want the facilities to be allocated to them in the future. After all, they don't "own" the place where they work, the entire society does. That is what it is for an economy to be socialized. Now, the same is true in regard to the "people's army." The members of it may make internal decisions concerning their "work" but the aims, what the army is doing, needs to be directed to serve the social purpose; in the case of a proletarian revolution, the purpose is to serve the working class organizations that have set up this army."

Yes, but in both cases, the economical and the military one, we walk over a razors edge. It is commons sense, but participating in the popular army has to be voluntary and the organizational structure has to be as democratic as possible (election of officers, revolutionary self-discipline) to stop those having leading roles from becoming rulers. The same applies to the economy, of course we need coordination, of course it has to be democratic, and of course that the means of production (or work, or wathever) are the fruit of the peoples labour and so should serve the whole society, but we must get workers to understand this, we cannot decide in a congress that there should be an organization of mandatory participation whose deccissions are binding even to those who opposed them. The question is about means, how to advance revolutionary positions not these positions. Otherwise anarchists could end up the same as leninists did, as a shrinking minority ruling the masses in a descending spiral of authoritarianism and capitalism (we cannot explain what happened in the russian revolution as the result of malice of the bolsheviks, that would be ridicoulous, they really beleived that to save the revolution they had to organize in a centralized hierarhical way and impose that organization to the masses).

As you will see, maybe we agree, maybe we don't. What is clear is that i do not find your words very clear. It could be that I am being overly suspicious, but i thing you could do a better job explaining yourself, specially by being more graphic and tackling the difficult sides of the issue.

Hope you find these questions and comment useful.

by Tom Wetzel - WSA (personal capacity) Tue Aug 22, 2006 10:20

There are historically two incompatible theories of the person that had some influence on anarchism, and i believe this is why anarchism tends to be insonsistent. On the one hand is the individualist or egoist notion that the individual is absolutely prior to the social collectivity. This is derived from bourgeois individualism. It leads to the idea that the individual ego must always be able to veto the social collectivity, that the social collectivity has no claim on the individual other than what the individual voluntarily consents to, which assumes that the individual is a standalone atom, complete apart from society. It leads to the notion of requiring unanimity in meetings. It leads to anti-institutional biases of some anarchists. But it is a false theory of the person. The alternative theory, which i believe is more consistent with reality, is the social theory of the person. On this theory, part of what the individual is is constituted by the social relationships that help to form that individual, such as one's class or ethic membership or gender. Some decisions are decisions that affect othes, not just you. There is no reason for you to claim an absolute, unilateral right to determine the content of those decisions, apart from the social collectivity. The only decisions you can claim legitimately a unilateral veto on are those decisions that affect only you, that are your private business alone. When you lose a vote in a meeting that is run by majority vote, that does not mean you are oppressed. Who is the oppressor? Class, structural racism and patriarchy are structures of oppression, they divide society into groups. Merely losing a vote occasionally in a meeting run by majority vote does not create such a structure of oppression.

You say:
"e must get workers to understand this, we cannot decide in a congress that there should be an organization of mandatory
participation whose deccissions are binding even to those who opposed them."

why not? Why can't an organization of society, rooted in assemblies, and congresses of delegates from assemblies, make decisions by majority vote that are binding on everyone? Again, i think you are implicitly assuming an individualist view that I disagree with.

by javier Fri Aug 25, 2006 11:19

"There are historically two incompatible theories of the person that had some influence on anarchism, and i believe this is why anarchism tends to be insonsistent. On the one hand is the individualist or egoist notion that the individual is absolutely prior to the social collectivity."

I disagree, it is nonsense to say that an individual is prior to the social collectivity because it is not prior to its material existence (the only existence) and thus to the society it develops in. That argument is delirious and I don't see no connection between it and my positions.

"This is derived from bourgeois individualism. It leads to the idea that the individual ego must always be able to veto the social collectivity, that the social collectivity has no claim on the individual other than what the individual voluntarily consents to, which assumes that the individual is a standalone atom, complete apart from society."

I disagree again, life would be very weird if we had to ask everyone affected by a decission if they agree with it because by action or inaction we constantly affect each other deeply. But we are talking about federalism and freedom not the preeminence of the individual over the collectivity (that is, OTHER INDIVIDUALS, that is opression, I don't think I have to quote Malatesta to insist on this distinction).

If a person does not agree with the collectives deccisions, it can decide not to participate of the collectivity. If a collectivity disagrees with the deccissions of a federation, it can decide not to participate in it. That is anarchism. That kind of treatment cannot be given to those that try to impose their will upon others (of course, if a person violently attacks another person it should be stopped, but it cannot be decided by the collectivity that a person that does not participate of it has to go do some work for it, and I am talking after the revolution). Otherwise, it would be no federation, but a State (and would quickly find the need for a coercion apparatus, and its control by a centralized hierarchical chain of command, and minorities would fight for the control of this center, and authority would breed capitalism again, classical anarchist argument).

"It leads to the notion of requiring unanimity in meetings."

Requiring unanimity in meeting is the negation of organization becuase it stagnates it, if people don't want to participate, they can stop doing it. For the sake of the organization it should be radically democratic and everyone should be heard, to make it more likely for the correct course of action to be taken.

"It leads to anti-institutional biases of some anarchists."

I do not know what are you talking about by institution. But I will insist with a question i asked before: what level's decissions would take preeminence, the highest or the lowest (that is the more directly controled by the people)?

I beleive that we need mandated delegates for organization. But i also beleive that the base has to keep power (or else, sooner than later they would become rulers and stop being mandated), if for example a town beleives that the way of distributing the goods and land incautated from the counter-revolutionaries decided by a congress is not appropiate, it should be able to decide on its own how to deal with the issue. The other towns would decide then how to treat that town, maybe it will convince them that for their conditions it was the right deccission (that is federalism, keeping local initiative and autonomy, that is the voluntary principle, you can read prudhon or malatesta explaining it quite clearly, and you can see at the cnt'; s history for countless examples, one of them the asturias insurrection on 1934 with opposition at the national level, participation in asturias an dopposition again in one local cnt inside asturias). The towns deccissions should leave room for people's own deccissions, it would not be acceptable for the town assembly to decide to confiscate all lands (including those of the small landholders that did not take sides during the clashes and are not -at least for now- convinced to join the town assembly).

"But it is a false theory of the person. The alternative theory, which i believe is more consistent with reality, is the social theory of the person. On this theory, part of what the individual is is constituted by the social relationships that help to form that individual, such as one's class or ethic membership or gender."

So? I agree but faild to see how this opposes my arguments.

"Some decisions are decisions that affect othes, not just you."

Most if not all deccissions affect (more or less, mostly more) more than one person.

"There is no reason for you to claim an absolute, unilateral right to determine the content of those decisions, apart from the social collectivity."

There are no objective or extra-subjective rights. It is not becuase some metaphysical rights but it is about the effects of actions. A central authority is authoritarian it need a coercive apparatus to impose its will and sooner or later breeds privilege and capitalism. Even if it claims to be democratic, How could the overall majority deccisions be applied where the overall minority is the local majority except by force? if force is excluded then that deccission is indicative but not imperative (I know that people should have a good motive for rejecting tha majorities deccisions and acting on their own instead of uniting and coordinating our efforts, but as durruti said "but I also know that what we do not obtain by reasoning we do not obtain it either by force. If our military apparatus of the revolution has to sustain itself by fear, it will happen that we won't have changed anything, but the colour of fear. It is only through liberating itself from fear that society wil be able to edify itself on freedom" That is anarchism Tom. He was talking about the voluntary nature of the participation in militias, about how they should not create blocking squads to shoot out deserters but just ask the for their weapons to give them to others willing to fight if they weren't able to keep resisting.

"The only decisions you can claim legitimately a unilateral veto on are those decisions that affect only you, that are your private business alone."

What would those deccisions be? To me they are a tiny and mostly unimportant minority of deccisions. People group together for most of the big stuff, the important stuff. The need to decide about how to do things, direct democracy if the method of choice to me, but if someone disagrees, it should be allowed to leave. The same in an interpersonal relationship as in a collectivity.

"When you lose a vote in a meeting that is run by majority vote, that does not mean you are oppressed."

Of course not. But if that deccision is that you should go to war and follow orders, wether you like it or not, then it is. And that is a deccision that affects all.

"Who is the oppressor? Class, structural racism and patriarchy are structures of oppression, they divide society into groups. Merely losing a vote occasionally in a meeting run by majority vote does not create such a structure of oppression."

I agree. But those structures you talk about is not the only kind of opression (it is the one we should concentrate on destroying, but without forgeting about the other and stopping it from growing inside our organizations).

You say:
"e must get workers to understand this, we cannot decide in a congress that there should be an organization of mandatory
participation whose deccissions are binding even to those who opposed them."

"why not? Why can't an organization of society, rooted in assemblies, and congresses of delegates from assemblies, make decisions by majority vote that are binding on everyone? "

Becuase for them to be really mandatory you need to create an apparatus of coercion run from a center capable of implementing those deccisions. thus extinguishing local initiative and all the stuff i have already said and many have said better than me before today,

"Again, i think you are implicitly assuming an individualist view that I disagree with."

i am not, I am explicitly assuming a federalist libertarian view.

I am sorry if i am a bit rough explaining myself or if it seems aggresive, it is only that i am tired and in need of sleep. Farwell comrade.

by Tom Wetzel Sat Aug 26, 2006 04:09

You say that if a person doesn't agree with a decision of the social collectivity they can opt out of that collectivity. That is simply not true. We're talking about the structure of the whole society. We're not talking about a social club. Membership in the entire society you grow up in isn't "voluntary." This is where some anarchists are quite confused. And saying this, again, presupposes that the person is absolutely prior to the social collectivity, which is the individualist view.

There are in fact many decisions that should be strictly my decisions. What color socks i wear today, which sort of music i choose to listen to in my dwelling, the route i walk across town, if i want to have a picture of my mother or other person on my desk at work, and on and on. Any decision about what i wish to request or would prefer to be
produced for my personal consumption is a decision for me alone to make. Communists who
say that all decisions about what to produce for
personal consumption are to be made by the social collectivity violate basic human self-management of an individual's personal life.

With regard to level of decision-making, it depends upon who is affected. If it is a question about whether to invest social resources in having a neighborhood part, that is for the neighborhood to decide. Now, you may say, "But there will be resources that others will have to produce, such as concrete for sidewalks produced somewhere else." Ah, but that's a different decision. The decision about how much concrete to produce is a social decision, but that's not the same as the decision about what the neighborhood's priorities are for what it will request from social production.

It doesn't matter if the group producing the concrete don't agree with what people in the society are demanding in the way of product, or if people in a factory don't agree with the product features demanded by the customers. What it means to have a socialized economy is that the people working someplace do not have a unilateral control with regard to those decisions that affect the customers or the surrounding community. The facilities are socially owned and the workforce there must be accountable to the whole society. This means, in the worst case scenario, the facilities can be taken away from the workers. This does not presuppose a state but it does presuppose social governance and social accountability.

by javier Fri Sep 01, 2006 11:57

Tom, I do not beleive you are answering to me.

I will try to be extremely precise.

I agree with you, that is how we should try to work. We should strive for coordination and solidarity in all aspects of society where and to the extent that it makes sense. I beleive we can do it. I organize and work for that objective. But altough I agree with anarchist communists argument about the whole means of production being the fruits of labour of all (present and past working men and women) and not just of those that make use fo them, I beleive that this socialization has to be a voluntary decission. "What we do not obtain by reasoning we do not obtain it either by force". We as anarchists should try to convince both by example and argumentation the masses to take up this position. But it is not an abstract reality to justify imposing iut over the people or parts of the people. I more or less agree with gillaume here:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/guillaume/works/ideas.htm

Do you agree? What do you think of this? Is this the way revolutionaries should act in a revolution (i am not suggesting nor speculating that you don't, i am -again- tired, and with little time to re read the debate, but curiious anyway)?

by Tom Wetzel - WSA (personal capacity) Sat Sep 02, 2006 03:49

Who is to do the taking over of the means of production? it is not the vanguard, not even an anarchist vanguard. It is the working class, or more accurately, mass organizations controlled by, and expressing the will, of most of the working class. But the new arrangement, doing away with the class power of the coordinator and capitalist classes, will inevitably have to be forced on the society by the working class. The dominating classes will not go along willingly, for the most part (some of them will, some of them will even support the change). That a person cannot be a boss, cannot hire wage slaves, in the new arrangement will not be "voluntary". To say it would be voluntary is to say that people are free to hire people as wage-slaves to work for them if they want. And if that can be done, it won't be a classless society. If you mean, the "anarchists" or some minority of revolutionaries, are not to "force" workers to carry out a revolution, well, of course.

by javier Sat Sep 02, 2006 20:57

What you have just said has been answered many years ago by Malatesta, you can read it in the anarchist faq if you want.

Here:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secH4.html#sech47

I find myself with no direct answer to the questions I ask you (I, explicitly, not the strawmen you seem to be discussing with)and so will no longer answer as i see it pointless (i will continue reading and talking with other people as I am using this as an opportunity of political formation, wich i think I really need).

I am not against the taking over of the means of production, violently where needed, i am talking about how the workers should organize between themselves, not about how they should treat those who try to cling to privilege. I honestly cannot understand why you cannot understand this. English may not be my native language but i think i was clear enough. So long.

Bye Tom

by Tom Wetzel Sun Sep 03, 2006 00:36

Maybe the problem is that you aren't posing the question clearly enough. It isn't good enough to say, as Malatesta does in the section you refer to, that forcing the dominating classes to lose power is not the same thing as forcing people to go along with decisions once the class power of the oppressors is taken away. That's because it is also possible for new classes to arise. What happened in the Russian revolution? And if the hiring of people to work for you is allowed, a new class system will arise. So, that is simply not allowed. Also, what is it for the society to own and control the means of production? It is for the society to control the allocation of assets like land and factories and equipment to groups of workers to produce things. That a group of workers do what the plan requires isn't "voluntary" otherwise you don't have a socialized economy. If people can do what they want with land, factories, etc. you have the re-emergence of private property. The idea that majority votes can't make decisions that are binding on the individual is implicitly an individualist position, even if an anarchist doesn't realize it.

by javier Sat Sep 09, 2006 03:23

I remembered an old article (also on anarkismo.net) and tought it might help clarify what we are talking about. Its title is "Malatesta's Anarchist Vision of Life After Capitalism" and you can read it here:

http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=3456

A quote from Malatesta will help clarify things:

“Imposed communism would be the most detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive. And free and voluntary communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist--as one wishes, always on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others.”

Look especially at this last part, if the workers are armed and in control of their workplaces capitalism is doomed. It cannot exist without the state because who would protect private property of the means of production from the people in arms? But yes, a socialized economy is needed, we cannot leave the market standing or else some collectives will be more prosperous and we shall see not private but collective property emerging, wich is not much better. The difference remains though in how to socialize the economy. if voluntarily (each unit of production -i know that the concept of unit of production is not a strong one as it is integrated in a larger system, however, that integration is loosely based and flexible between enterprises, if not the market would be impossible and even if it is not the idealization it is made of it it is partially true- deciding in assembly to join or leave the federation) or by means of coercion?

This is a core anarchist position, not a merly tactical one. It is a principle, you can read it in guillaume's (one of bakunin's closest friends and comrades) work "Ideas on Social Organization", here:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/guillaume/works/ideas.htm

Makhno, Durruti, they had clear and concrete ideas on how to organize stuff and of the importance of doing it good and fast. But they stressed this aspect of anarchist tought nonetheless.

I would like to see it in the anarchist faq, it sure would be a good addition.

It is not only the position I advocate as a matter of principle, but for very concrete motives. In a revolution, it is highly unlikely that the working people will have a sigle idea about how to organize. Solidarity and the need for coordination for reorganizing social life and resisting the reactionary will make people look for ways of reaching agreement on how to organize despite different views. There are two ways of maouvering in this situation. Either we try to convince others "by example and propaganda" only by means "which depend on persuasion, which spring from the evidence of facts" and coordinate with those we are in disagreement where we can (like the defense of the revolution, as makhno did with the bolsheviks while he denounced their policies and strived for the free organization of social life by the workers themselves). Or we seek a position of relative power (a center) from where we can impose the (alledgedly) correct direction to the revolution (the whole revolution, other organizations and the unorganized masses included, even those that did not participate in the "as democratic as you wan t", congress where that decission is taken) and thus save it. This leads to repression, government, and the rebuilding of the state apparatus. It makes no difference that the ones on top of those doing the dirty work claim to be just executing the will of the majority. It doesn't make them a bit more right nor less authoritarian.

I do not know if you would disagree with what i said. But I suspect you do by what you said before:

"Who is to do the taking over of the means of production? it is not the vanguard, not even an anarchist vanguard. It is the working class, or more accurately, mass organizations controlled by, and expressing the will, of most of the working class."

I work trying to build "mass organizations constrolled by, and expressing the will, of most of the working class", but to me that means not only the federation of base assemblies via mandated, accountable, and recallable delegates and comissions, at many levels, but for this assemblies to keep autonomy in the base (while seeking coordination in every way that makes sense and rejecting it only when the assembly thinks that it has to -a deccission that corresponds to this assembly alone, altough others may act on consequence, for example cutting relations or removing solidarity from them making use of their autnomy-).

looks like i am back on the debate but i won't answer again if i do not have anything else to add to the debate

by Tom Wetzel Sat Sep 09, 2006 12:44

The socialization of an economy necessarily involves coercion. That's because the dominating classes, capitalists and coordinators, will not give up their power voluntarily. Taking away their power means constructing new institutions of economic and political power, to replace the institutions of class domination. If this is done by the mass democratic working class organizations, it is likely there will be majority votes and minorities will not agree. I don't see any problem with that, as i see majority rule as part of collective self-rule by the working class. The new social structure will be imposed by the mass movement. It is not possible to have a society without a social structure. If libertarian tendencies are dominant in the movement, it is more likey the new structure will be a structure of self-management, and thus of liberation. But it is an imposed structure nonetheless.

Javier quotes Malatesta:

“Imposed communism would be the most detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive. And free and voluntary communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist--as one wishes, always on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others.”

Malatesta is here being self-contradictory. That's because a system where there is collective private ownership of means of production by groups of workers means there will be market exchange. That's because their private ownership sets up a bargaining power relation with their customers, etc.

And a system governed by the market will inevitably generate a class division. Hence there will be oppression and exploitation. To eliminate the class system and produce a stable and enduring working class self-management, is inconsistent with market socialism, which is what collectivism and mutualism are forms of.

To have a socialized economy means that use of the means of production by workers is only a use right, they must be accountable to the community, and that is the point to participatory social planning. To say that individualism and mutualism are options people can choose is to say that he is talking about a market economy where there is private ownership of the means of production.

Continuing:
"Or we seek a position of relative power (a center) from where we can impose the (alledgedly) correct direction to the revolution (the whole revolution, other organizations and the unorganized masses included, even those that did not participate in the "as democratic as you wan t", congress where that decission is taken) and thus save it. This leads to repression, government, and the rebuilding of the state apparatus. It makes no difference that the ones on top of those doing the dirty work claim to be just executing the will of the majority. It doesn't make them a bit more right nor less authoritarian."

For the sake of argument, let's take a scenario. Suppose that the CNT in the summer of 1936 had overthrown the government in Catalonia and invited the other worker and farmer organizations to a regional worker congress, and this was the decision-making body to set up a new institutional structure, a unified people's militia, people's courts, socialization of ownership of the economic assets, etc. And suppose this congress elected an administrative committee, a Regional Defense Council, to oversee the people's militia. And worker industrial federations concentrated power to manage their industries, in the limits of some
social planning system, etc.

They've then set up a new polity, a new governing structure both in the economic and political sense. You could say, if you like, that it's a form of government. I think a structure of governance is absolutely inevitable. And this means it will be able to enforce its rules. I don't think this entails that a state still exists. A state is a top-down governance structure with managerial chain of command hierarchies, and separation from control of the mass of the people.

A congress of delegates elected by assemblies at the base, where decisions on important issues are referred back to the base, and enforcement through a people's militia, tied to the working class organizations, is not sufficiently separated from the mass of the people to be the control mechanism of a dominating class. Or, let's put it this way, to be more cautious: IF this structure is actually, successffully controlled by the working class, and does not become the basis of a new dominating class, then it isn't a state. A governance structure for society is inevitable but
it need not be a state. If a polity degenerates into the mechanism of power of a new, rising elite, then it is a state. But in the scenario i've imagined, control over all parts of the economy is in the hands of the workers. There is no central organ that directs or controls the economy. the governance structure is decentralized, with local, regional and national structures accountable to the local assemblies.

I don't agree with the idea of mandated delegates
at congresses. That makes the congress itself useless. The idea of a congress is that the delegates come with proposals from their organizations or communities and then there is a process of democratic discussion and give and take and compromises are worked out to incorporate the considerations of the various communities represented. Mandates make no sense because the base didn't participate in the discussion and may not be aware of the considerations brought forward by delegates from other areas. A better way to keep things under the control of the base is to require that, at least on important issues, the proposals worked out at
congresses through discussion are then sent back to the base assemblies for local debate
and ratification.

by javier Thu Sep 21, 2006 05:40

"The socialization of an economy necessarily involves coercion."

If by socialization of the economy you mean the taking over of the means of production from bosses and capitalists by the rank and file workers then we agree. If by that you mean that those means of production work according to a common plan and in solidarity I disagree. That would be coercion towards the workers by part of them (or someone alledgley obeying their directives).

I insist with this, the working class is heterogenous, socialization will be a proccess. it is needed and highly benefical but it won't be done at the same speed in all places and it won't take the same forms. Please, read (or re-read) Guillaume's work, look at the different kinds of "modes of production" that he talks about and how different types of work impose the need for different types of organization, more collective or less collective. I defend the socialization of the barber shops in the spanish revolution because it made sense, it was better that way. But it wasn't necessary, it was agreed democratically (and the decission was binding, in the sense that they were expected to carry it out, for those that participated in the decission and agreed with it, unless you are talking of obligatory syndication) by the syndicate (and as far as i know they didn't go take the scissors of unsyndicated working class barbers). The same with all, collective action is better but the modes of production are not like a machine, things are not like cogs in a wheel, there is room for a looser coordination and if people don't agree with a tight coordination and planification of production from the start we are not forced to impose it (altough it will help us a lot for the well being of all and for the defense of the revolution to advance in the road to greater coordination and solidarity).

"That's because the dominating classes, capitalists and coordinators, will not give up their power voluntarily."

That is why we need popular militias, the people in arms, in no way does it justify pointing those same arms against fellow workers that do not agree with the majority decission.

"Taking away their power means constructing new institutions of economic and political power, to replace the institutions of class domination. If this is done by the mass democratic working class organizations, it is likely there will be majority votes and minorities will not agree. I don't see any problem with that, as i see majority rule as part of collective self-rule by the working class."

That concept sounds a lot like the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to me. But it didn't work out that way for the leninists. We can conclude that they were hypocrites or that they were wrong somehow. I beleive this is what they got wrong, a dictatorship kills the revolution, no matter how collective or democratic it claims to be or is at first. The methods of a dictatorship always lead to a minority becoming the new rulers and thisis what anarchism does definitley get right. Freedom, is the lifeblood of revolution.


"The new social structure will be imposed by the mass movement."

You should define social structure because production (and we are talking about production or else we get into discussing a lot of subject at the same time and it is even less likely that we will understand each other) can work in a descentralized fashion, in fact, that is how it works, and centralization has proves to be very inefficient altoguh it allows for the mobilization and concentration of huge amounts of resources. And federalism is better than both because it is descentered but united, unfragmentated, seeking solidarity and coordination but not imposing it.

"It is not possible to have a society without a social structure. If libertarian tendencies are dominant in the movement, it is more likey the new structure will be a structure of self-management, and thus of liberation. But it is an imposed structure nonetheless."

It need not be, always remember that what you are arguing for is not the only possibility (maybe you don't think that there are other possibilities, but that would seem to me more proper from Engels "On Authority" than from a fellow anarchist)

Javier quotes Malatesta:

“Imposed communism would be the most detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive. And free and voluntary communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist--as one wishes, always on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others.”

"Malatesta is here being self-contradictory. That's because a system where there is collective private ownership of means of production by groups of workers means there will be market exchange. That's because their private ownership sets up a bargaining power relation with their customers, etc."

He is not. Both mutualism and collectivism (read bakunin and proudhon) stress the need for solidarity. In fact, Bakunin's collectivism is a form of transitional period because he defended the communist maxim (fro each, to each ...). But he (as guillaume point out) knew from the start that it wasn't possible from the start (both the maxim and a uniform or all encompassing organization of production or social life).


"And a system governed by the market will inevitably generate a class division. Hence there will be oppression and exploitation."

if people act like isolated agents without solidarity it will eventually happen. The same as a dictatorship will eventually lead to that. So? We must strive for and promote in the base assemblies and everywhere we can for the greatest coordination and solidarity (like it happened in spain, in wich common funds were gradually established in many but not all collectives adn socialization went further in some places than in others).

"To eliminate the class system and produce a stable and enduring working class self-management, is inconsistent with market socialism"

Yes.

"which is what collectivism and mutualism are forms of."

Not exactly but see a bit higher.

"To have a socialized economy means that use of the means of production by workers is only a use right, they must be accountable to the community, and that is the point to participatory social planning. "

No. It means that the economy is at the service of society and functions coordinatedly.

"To say that individualism and mutualism are options people can choose is to say that he is talking about a market economy where there is private ownership of the means of production."

No. More probably something like homesteading.

But I am not arguing in favour of them. I am describing the alternatives and choosing a method, the anarchist method.

Continuing:
"Or we seek a position of relative power (a center) from where we can impose the (alledgedly) correct direction to the revolution (the whole revolution, other organizations and the unorganized masses included, even those that did not participate in the "as democratic as you wan t", congress where that decission is taken) and thus save it. This leads to repression, government, and the rebuilding of the state apparatus. It makes no difference that the ones on top of those doing the dirty work claim to be just executing the will of the majority. It doesn't make them a bit more right nor less authoritarian."

"For the sake of argument, let's take a scenario. Suppose that the CNT in the summer of 1936 had overthrown the government in Catalonia and invited the other worker and farmer organizations to a regional worker congress, and this was the decision-making body to set up a new institutional structure, a unified people's militia, people's courts, socialization of ownership of the economic assets, etc. And suppose this congress elected an administrative committee, a Regional Defense Council, to oversee the people's militia. And worker industrial federations concentrated power to manage their industries, in the limits of some
social planning system, etc."

And suppoose the rabassaires rejected the decission to socialize the economy. What to do then? Bakunin and Malatesta advocated quite clearly that the lands of counter revolutionaries (those that fought against the revolution or run away from it) and latifundists in general will be expropiated and distributed among the landless and that those who work the land will get the land. And Guillaume wrote quite detailedly about this (the) agrarian question. What to do with this petit burgeois small land owners? As long as they work their land without hired labour and they do not claim more land that they can work it would be respected. But cooperation has a lot of benefits and so will be a very good incentive for even them joining the federation (like machinery from the cities or health care, union means streaght). Collective labour (for example working a field) imposes collective property (and thus the collective distribution fo the goods produced between those who worked) but it is not the same as communism (wich would be that there is not a negotiation but solidarity, and the whole federation tries to look for the well being of all its members, even the less fortunate).

"They've then set up a new polity, a new governing structure both in the economic and political sense. You could say, if you like, that it's a form of government. I think a structure of governance is absolutely inevitable. And this means it will be able to enforce its rules. I don't think this entails that a state still exists. A state is a top-down governance structure with managerial chain of command hierarchies, and separation from control of the mass of the people."

"A congress of delegates elected by assemblies at the base, where decisions on important issues are referred back to the base, and enforcement through a people's militia, tied to the working class organizations, is not sufficiently separated from the mass of the people to be the control mechanism of a dominating class. Or, let's put it this way, to be more cautious: "

"IF this structure is actually, successffully controlled by the working class, and does not become the basis of a new dominating class, then it isn't a state."

This is where we disagree, to me that is leninism. "it will be a dictatorship because all governments are a dictatorship, but it will be the dictatorship of the proletariat, the democratic dictatorship of the working class, or the organizations representing most of the working class". To me that would end up being like all the dictatorships and governments, a minority in charge, no matter the democratic promises. And the chain fo command and the whole state apparatus would follow, and democracy will be limited, all in the name of the objective circumstances.

"A governance structure for society is inevitable but
it need not be a state. If a polity degenerates into the mechanism of power of a new, rising elite, then it is a state. But in the scenario i've imagined, control over all parts of the economy is in the hands of the workers. There is no central organ that directs or controls the economy. the governance structure is decentralized, with local, regional and national structures accountable to the local assemblies."

"I don't agree with the idea of mandated delegates
at congresses. That makes the congress itself useless. The idea of a congress is that the delegates come with proposals from their organizations or communities and then there is a process of democratic discussion and give and take and compromises are worked out to incorporate the considerations of the various communities represented. Mandates make no sense because the base didn't participate in the discussion and may not be aware of the considerations brought forward by delegates from other areas. A better way to keep things under the control of the base is to require that, at least on important issues, the proposals worked out at
congresses through discussion are then sent back to the base assemblies for local debate
and ratification."

If a decission is taken it will be binding only if it is ratified by the base. That is why mandated delagates, so that it will be clear when the delegate speaks and when it is its mandate. Obviously the base will discuss more the issues that it disagrees with, not only those that the congress atendees think are important and should be discussed.

by Tom Wetzel - WSA (personal capacity) Sat Sep 23, 2006 02:54

Javier writes:

me:
"Taking away their power means constructing new institutions of economic and political power, to replace the institutions of class domination. If this is done by the mass democratic working class organizations, it is likely there will be majority votes and minorities will not agree. I don't see any problem with that, as i see majority rule as part of collective self-rule by the working class."

Javier responds:
"That concept sounds a lot like the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to me. But it didn't work out that way for the leninists. We can conclude that they were hypocrites or that they were wrong somehow. I beleive this is what they got wrong, a dictatorship kills the revolution, no matter how collective or democratic it claims to be or is at first. The methods of a dictatorship always lead to a minority becoming the new rulers and thisis what anarchism does definitley get right. Freedom, is the lifeblood of revolution."

I don't agree with your analysis of what went wrong in Russia. The Bolsheviks didn't believe in participatory democracy. It had never been part of the tradition of Russian Marxism, either of the Mensheviks or Bolsheviks. For the Bolsheviks, what was important was having the party in control of a top-down structure. They set up the Supreme Council of National Economy, a central planning
organ appointed from above, within weeks of taking power. That naturally led to appointment of managers from above, under the slogan of "one-man management." The Bolsheviks created within weeks the Cheka, a political police force controlled not by the soviets, not by the working class, but answerable only to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. They replaced the workers' militia with the top-down Red Army in the spring of 1918. The consolidation of the power of the intelligentsia (professaional/managerial class) through these structures set the state for a
new class system, in which workers were subordinate.

To see the problem here as majority rule is ridiculous. In fact it was minority rule. As soon as the Bolsheviks started losing elections to the soviets in the spring of 1918, they moved to
"the dictatorship of the party."

But what does "dictatorship" mean? You don't say. If you think majority rule is a "dictatorship" I think you're just engaging in labeling, you're not giving an argument. I'm obviously not proposing the dictatorship of a party.

Javier again:

"You should define social structure because production (and we are talking about production or else we get into discussing a lot of subject at the same time and it is even less likely that we will understand each other) can work in a descentralized fashion, in fact, that is how it works, and centralization has proves to be very inefficient altoguh it allows for the mobilization and concentration of huge amounts of resources."

The social structure includes the basic economic and political institutions. It includes those features that determine if it has a division into classes or not, and if so of what type. "Decentralization" is way too vague a term to pin anything on. The market is highly decentralized but it inevitably generates
a system of class subordination and exploitation.

Javier again:
me:
"It is not possible to have a society without a social structure. If libertarian tendencies are dominant in the movement, it is more likey the new structure will be a structure of self-management, and thus of liberation. But it is an imposed structure nonetheless."

Javier:
"It need not be.."

You need to provide an argument. I have no idea what you are talking about. Every society has a social structure. It isn't possible not to have one at this point in human history. Either the movement imposes a new structure that ensures there is no
longer a division into classes or there will continue to be a division into classes. There are no other alternatives.

Me:
"Malatesta is here being self-contradictory. That's because a system where there is collective private ownership of means of production by groups of workers means there will be market exchange. That's because their private ownership sets up a bargaining power relation with their customers, etc."

Javier:
"He is not. Both mutualism and collectivism (read bakunin and proudhon) stress the need for solidarity. In fact, Bakunin's collectivism is a form of transitional period because he defended
the communist maxim (fro each, to each ...). But he (as guillaume point out) knew from the start that it wasn't possible from the start (both the maxim and a uniform or all encompassing organization of production or social life)."

You didn't answer the argument. Mutualism and individualism presuppose private ownership of productive assets and a market economy. This will inevitably generate a class system. Bakunin
may have thought that exchange by labor hours was a transition to communism, but the thing is both labor hour exchange and communism would be highly inefficent and probably unstable
economic systems. In any event, my point is that a socialized and classless economy is not consistent with private ownership of productive
assets and market governance. In the Spanish revolution collectivization of individual firms ended up creating inequalities between collectives
and other problems. The CNT's aim was to merge all the firms into a single industrial federation and all industrial federations into a planned economy. For them it was merely a question of whether
they had the power to do this. And the CNT was entirely correct in holding that view.

Javier again:
me:
"And a system governed by the market will inevitably generate a class division. Hence there will be oppression and exploitation."
Javier:
"if people act like isolated agents without solidarity it will eventually happen. The same as a dictatorship will eventually lead to that. So? We must strive for and promote in the base assemblies and everywhere we can for the greatest coordination and solidarity (like it happened in spain, in wich common funds
were gradually established in many but not all collectives adn socialization went further in some places than in others)."

It isn't a question of what people's intentions are but of pressures, tendencies, generated by a particular social structure. The CNT in Spain knew they had to press for an end to market governance -- that's why they merged the firms in a single industry or town into a single organization. They didn't get to the point of creating a planned economy because they didn't have the power. they didn't have the power because of their failure to take political power.

Continuing: Me:
"To have a socialized economy means that use of the means of production by workers is only a use right, they must be accountable to the community, and that is the point to participatory social planning. "
Javier:
"No. It means that the economy is at the service of society and functions coordinatedly."

What are you saying "no" to? If worker groups assert a unilateral power of decision over the workplaces, this sets up a bargaining power relationship to customers, suppliers, community. It inevitably generates a market system of allocation. Either the economy will be governed by the market, with all the consequences, or it will be governed by a social plan. There is no other alternative.

me:
"To say that individualism and mutualism are options people can choose is to say that he is talking about a market economy where there is private ownership of the means of production."
Javier:
"No. More probably something like homesteading."

No. It is possible to have, within a socilized economy of participatory self-management, a system for new groups being allocated resources to be a production group, for example, if
they propose producing something and enough people say they'd like that. But need not mean, and must not mean, private ownership but mutualism and individualism presuppose private ownership,
with individuals or groups having power of unilateral decision-making which implies a market relation to others.

me:
"For the sake of argument, let's take a scenario. Suppose that the CNT in the summer of 1936 had overthrown the government in Catalonia and invited the other worker and farmer organizations to a regional worker congress, and this was the decision-making body to set up a new institutional structure, a unified people's militia, people's courts, socialization of ownership of the economic assets, etc. And suppose this congress elected an administrative committee, a Regional Defense Council, to oversee the people's militia. And worker industrial federations concentrated power to manage their industries, in the limits of some
social planning system, etc."
Javier:
"And suppoose the rabassaires rejected the decission to socialize the economy. What to do then? Bakunin and Malatesta advocated quite
clearly that the lands of counter revolutionaries (those that fought against the revolution or run away from it) and latifundists in general will be expropiated and distributed among the landless and that those who work the land will get the land. And Guillaume wrote quite detailedly about this (the) agrarian question. What to do with this petit burgeois small land owners? As long as they work their land without hired labour and they do not claim more land that they can work it would be respected. But cooperation has a lot of benefits
and so will be a very good incentive for even them joining the federation (like machinery from the cities or health care, union means streaght). Collective labour (for example working a field)
imposes collective property (and thus the collective distribution fo the goods produced between those who worked) but it is not the same
as communism (wich would be that there is not a negotiation but solidarity, and the whole federation tries to look for the well being of all its members, even the less fortunate)."

Well, to begin with, it's necessary to separate the question of the transition from the question of what the aim is, what direction we need to evolve the economy. You seem to think that socialization of the economy would be inconsistent with the family farmers continuing to have control over their farms. I don't see that. What it does require is that they are integrated into an economic system that provides them with remuneration for their work and supplies to keep going, and they provide their products in exchange for that. In other words, they don't have to be able to sell their products on the
market for them to be able to self-manage their farms. In fact in areas where collectivization was very strong, as in Aragon, in villges where smallholders wanted to continue on their own,
the village collective typically had to set up a system for getting supplies for the "individualists" and exchanging supplies for the product of their labor. This means that the collectized economy was controlling allocation and remuneration to the
farmers. Moreover, restrictions were placed on their right of use of their land. They could not hire wage laborers. It's not necessary to take away their self-management of their land to move towards a socialized economy.

me on scenario of the CNT actually carrying out its program:
"They've then set up a new polity, a new governing structure both in the economic and political sense. You could say, if you like, that it's a form of government. I think a structure of governance is
absolutely inevitable. And this means it will be able to enforce its rules. I don't think this entails that a state still exists. A state is a top-down governance structure with managerial chain of
command hierarchies, and separation from control of the mass of the people."

"A congress of delegates elected by assemblies at the base, where decisions on important issues are referred back to the base, and enforcement through a people's militia, tied to the working class
organizations, is not sufficiently separated from the mass of the people to be the control mechanism of a dominating class. Or, let's put it this way, to be more cautious: "

"IF this structure is actually, successffullycontrolled by the working class, and does not become the basis of a new dominating class, then it isn't a state."

Javier:
"This is where we disagree, to me that is leninism. "it will be a dictatorship because all governments are a dictatorship, but it will be the dictatorship of the proletariat, the democratic dictatorship of the working class, or the organizations representing most of the working class". To me that would end up being like all the dictatorships and governments, a minority in charge, no matter the
democratic promises. And the chain fo command and the whole state apparatus would follow, and democracy will be limited, all in the name of the objective circumstances."

To say that any polity will be a "dictatorship" is merely an assertion without any argument to show you're right. And what i described is most definitely NOT Leninism. You don't know what Leninism is, apparently. Leninists do not advocate participatory
democracy of the base assemblies, they don't advocate that this is how society should be controlled. Leninists advocate a vanguard
party taking power thru a state hierarchy. What I described -- the CNT's program -- was for the taking power of the working class en masse through mass democratic bodies accountable to the assemblies at the base. Lenin was opposed to anything like that. In 1921 when some Bolsheviks advocated election of the governing boards for the economy by the mass of union members, Lenin denounced it as a "anarchosyndicalist deviation" because it would give power to the "non-party masses." And that proposal was more hierarchical than what I described because the Workers Opposition, being
Bolsheviks, didn't believe in participatory democracy at the base, just elections of leaders.

If there is any lesson of the Spanish revolution that is clear, the working class must take power to consolidate the revolution in new institutions, or else the revolution will be defeated. A society requires to have institutions of governance, through which the basic rules are made and enforced. No society is possible without that.

On mandated delegates J. says:
"If a decission is taken it will be binding only if it is ratified by the base. That is why mandated delagates, so that it will be clear when the delegate speaks and when it is its mandate. Obviously the base will discuss more the issues that it disagrees with, not only those that the congress atendees think are important and should be discussed."

It isn't necessary to have mandated delegates to require ratification by the base. Mandating delegates undermines the purpose of a congress, which should be for different groups to bring their
concerns and work out a compromise,incorporating the concerns
of the different constituencies. This means delegates must not be restricted to only voting for what has been pre-approved. It's okay to say that the elected delegates must initially present
and defend the perspectives of the organization they represent. But after that what is needed is a deliberative process involving give and take. Then the issues that are controversial or really
important, from the point of view of the base, are debated and decided by the base assemblies.

by javier Fri Sep 29, 2006 08:50

It seems that the debate will continue here:

http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=3778