Benutzereinstellungen

Neue Veranstaltungshinweise

Iberia

Es wurden keine neuen Veranstaltungshinweise in der letzten Woche veröffentlicht

Kommende Veranstaltungen

Iberia | History of anarchism

Keine kommenden Veranstaltungen veröffentlicht
Recent articles by Thabang Sefalala* and Lucien van der Walt
This author has not submitted any other articles.
Recent Articles about Iberia History of anarchism

«Ο Ντουρούτι σ&... Aug 02 23 by Αργύρης Αργυριάδης

Neno Vasco por Neno Vasco: fragmentos autobiográficos de um anarquista Mar 21 23 by Thiago Lemos Silva

Σαμπατέ: Aντίσ&... Mar 13 23 by Αργύρης Αργυριάδης

Building a mass anarchist movement: the example of Spain’s CNT

category iberia | history of anarchism | opinion / analysis author Friday October 02, 2015 17:28author by Thabang Sefalala* and Lucien van der Waltauthor email zacf at riseup dot net Report this post to the editors

The ideas of anarchism have often been misunderstood, or sidelined. A proliferation of studies, such as Knowles’ Political Economy from Below, Peirats’ Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, and others, have aimed to address this problem – and also to show that anarchism can never be limited to an ideology merely to keep professors and students busy in debating societies.

Anarchists have been labeled “utopians” or regarded as catalysts of chaos and violence, as at the protests in Seattle, 1999, against the World Trade Organization. However, anarchism has a constructive core and an important history as a mass movement – including in its syndicalist (trade union) form. It rejects the authoritarianism and totalitarianism often associated with Marxist regimes, and seeks to present a living alternative to classical Marxism, social democracy and the current neo-liberal hegemonic order. It rejects both the versions of Marxism that have justified massive repression, and the more cautious versions, like that of Desai in his book Marx’s Revenge, which claim that a prolonged capitalist stage – with all its horrors – remains essential before socialism can be attempted. It rejects the ideas that exploitation and oppression are “historical necessities” for historical progress.

cnt_fai.jpg

The history of anarchism and syndicalism shows that the contrary is true. One of the crucial themes highlighted by recent works in this tradition is that the construction of a mass anarchist and syndicalist movement based on anarchist principles of anti-authoritarianism, equality, freedom, liberty, justice, and democracy is possible – and is something of which ordinary working class and poor people are perfectly capable.

This is wonderfully demonstrated by the anarcho-syndicalist CNT (the National Confederation of Labour) of Spain. It was formed in 1910 in Barcelona, in the Catalonia province of Spain – the country’s industrial hub. The CNT emerged out of difficult social, political and economic conditions that characterised Spain, and grew, despite severe repression, into the 1930s. Embodying the central anarchist principles of individual freedom, cooperation, and democracy, the CNT became the most powerful union – and mass – movement in the country.

Spain was marked by high level of inequality, and a social system that favored the elite; a rightwing Church often operated as an institution of oppression, as did the state. The activities by the CNT were heavily repressed through armed force. State power was continually used to smash working class and peasant resistance; this was essential for the ruling class to maintain their privileges.

Despite these conditions – and in contradistinction to the notion that repression, authority, exploitation, crippling poverty, hunger and misery, as well as wealth and power for people numbering no more than the fingers on one hand, are necessary evils – the CNT provided a practical example of ordinary human beings possessing profound capacities and intelligence. It built a mass union movement that defended and advanced workers’ conditions, that educated millions of people in an alternative worldview, that worked alongside communities against evictions and for lower rents, and that allied with working class, the peasant youth and women fighting for the anarchist cause.

Through its structures, its militancy, its education and its alliances, the CNT helped develop and nurture, on a mass scale, the capacities and innate intelligence of the masses – capacities and intelligence that nullified the need for mastery of the many by an elite. This was demonstrated most dramatically in the 1930s, when the CNT (and the allied Anarchist Federation of Iberia, the FAI, an anarchist political organization linked to it) launched or supported a series of popular rebellions. In 1936, the CNT and FAI helped stop a military coup, unleashing a massive and profound social revolution that saw millions of hectares of land, and vast parts of industry and services placed under worker and community control. Often governed through CNT structures, the “collectives” were self-managed, highly efficient, and rejected the logic of production for profit; they moved towards the implementation of the maximum programme of anarchist communism.

Unfortunately, failures by the CNT and FAI stalled this programme, and opened the door to its defeat. That said, the CNT’s experience from the 1910s to the 1930s highlights the reality that we are, at this current conjuncture, in fact settling for far less than human beings are capable of creating. It is in the hands of ordinary people to remake the world. This should be remembered in movement building: the CNT model that, following in the footsteps of anarchist luminary Mikhail Bakunin, insisted crisply that “Future social organization must be made solely from the bottom upwards, by the free association or federation of workers,” first local, then finally, “in a great federation, international and universal,” embracing all suffering humanity, and capable of re-making the world into one based on social justice, equality and freedom.

*Writing in his personal capacity

Verwandter Link: http://zabalaza.net

cnt1936.jpg

This page can be viewed in
English Italiano Deutsch

Iberia | History of anarchism | en

Fri 29 Mar, 04:12

browse text browse image

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

more >>

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

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

imageThe Labour Movement in Spain Nov 04 by KSL 0 comments

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

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

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

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

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

textThe Great Swindle: 'This is not the tale of Salvador Puig Antich' Jul 06 by KSL 4 comments

The Catalan anarchist Salvador Puig Antich, murdered by the Francoist regime on 2 March 1974, is to be the subject of a film 'Salvador' starring Daniel Brühl. This article from the forthcoming issue of KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library highlights the falsification and recuperation it's been accused of: 'This movie is manipulative and tinkers with the real history which was insulting and terrifying to all of us who, male and female, who fought and lived through those years.'

more >>

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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