Anarcho-Syndicalism 101: newswire/167

Texts :: history

Collectives in the Spanish Revolution

by Gaston Leval

02 Sep 2005

"The ideals pursued by the Spanish anarchists are the same as those followed and propagated by the greatest minds from Plato and perhaps some of the Stoics, right up to our own times. The Spanish revolution achieved what the early Christians were asking, what in the XIVth Century the Jacquerie in France and the English peasants led by John Ball struggled for, and those in Germany whom Thomas Munzer was to lead two centuries later, as well as the English Levellers led by Everard and Winstanley, the Moraves brothers, disciples of Jean Huss. That which Thomas More foresaw in his Utopia, and Francis Bacon, and Campanella in La Citta del Sole and the priest Jean Meslier in his famous Testament (too often ignored) and Morelli in his Naufrage des lles Flottantes, and Mably who like Morelli inspired the noblest minds in the American Revolution, and the enrages of the French Revolution of whom Jacques Roux, the "red priest" was one. And the army of thinkers and reformers of the XIXth Century and of the first thirty years of the present. It is, in world history, the first attempt to apply the dream of all that was best in mankind. It succeeded in achieving, in many cases completely, the finest ideal conceived by the human mind and this will be its permanent glory. "

Published by Freedom Press, London, 1975
Originally published in French under the title "Espagne Libertaire (1936-1939)"
by Editions du Cercle, 1971

Part One: Preamble
(161K)

I: The Ideal

II: The Men and the Struggles

III: Material for a Revolution

IV: A Revolutionary Situation

Part Two: Agrarian Socialisation
(Part A, 162K)

V: The Aragon Federation of Collectives:

Part Two: Agrarian Socialisation (cont.)
(Part B, 179K)

VI: Collectives in the Levante

VII: The Collectives of Castile

VIII: Collectivist Book-Keeping

IX: Libertarian Democracy

X: The Charters

"It was in Graus that I saw proclaimed at first on the facades in all the streets most strikingly and intensively, the joy of effort and of the new order. All the places of work, all the workshops, depots, goods stores, carried on their facades wooden boards of different sizes painted red and black, on which one read according to their classification in the collective machinery of production: Communal Linen Drapery No. 1 and No. 2; Communal Joinery No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5; Tailors' Collective No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4; Bakers' Collective, Cartwrights' Collective, Cobblers' Collective, etc.... It was a hymn, a proclamation by each and all, an explosion of confidence and happiness. All this was destroyed by a Brigade led by the Stalinist general Lister and then by Franco. It all remains vivid within me and will remain as long as I am able to recall things and men."

Part Three: Industry and Public Services
(140K)

XI: Industrial Achivements

Syndicalisations in Alcoy

XII: Achivements in the Public Services

"The Spain that was struggling against Francoism had then about half the Spanish population, that is 12 million inhabitants from which number one had to deduct, if we do not accept the demagogy of the time, those who had voted for the Rightists and who were, more or less, pro-fascists. Now in February 1937 a congress was held in Valencia by the Federation of the Health Syndicates. These Syndicates, spread throughout the different towns of "Republican" Spain, about 40 in all grouped 40,000 members, representing a variety of functions similar to those we found in the example of Barcelona. This makes it possible to guess at the number of tasks and initiatives that were undertaken in that period of creative effervescence."

Part Four: Towns and Isolated Achivements
(96k)

XIII: Town Collectivisations

XIV: Isolated Achievements

"The Revolution did not always manage to socialise all the workshops, works, and factories of the established industries in a locality or in a region . . . Nevertheless these achievements were numerous and deserve to be listed and studied in depth. And even though it is not possible to include their history in the general structure -- local, regional, national -- they are of considerable interest. In many cases each would deserve a monograph to itself. If just one of them had been realised, today it would arouse the interest of reformers on an international scale. Here are some examples, one agrarian, the remainder of an industrial nature, which surely serve to further illustrate the multiplicity of creative initiatives about which one cannot ever say enough."

Part Five: Parties and Government
(42k)

XV: Political Collaboration

XVI: Libertarians and Republicans

XVII: The Internal Counter-Revolution

"A complete account of the behaviour of the government authorities to the diverse achievements of socialisation, undertaken and realised by the Spanish libertarians during the period 1936-1939 would show contradictory attitudes which could be commented on in different ways. That the Ministry of Industry, which in the early months was in the hands of a C.N.T. militant, Juan Peiró, did in some cases help undertakings by financial contributions, such as was the case of the S.I.C.E.P. in Elda, there can be no question. But in general, that aid had as its objective not so much to help socialisation, which was not approved of, but to save the political situation by supporting war industries. This did not prevent the Stalinists, when they were laying down the law inside the government, to sabotage even the manufacture of goods needed for the struggle against the Francoist armies."

Part Six: Epilogue
(41k)

XVIII: Final Reflections

"Without organic preparation no social and truly socialist revolution is possible. The chances of success depend on the extent of the pre-existing constructive capacity. But this does not mean that the preparation should be only intellectual and technical. It must be, above all, moral, for the degree of specialised intellectuality and technicality achieved depends on the degree of consciousness which creates the sense of duty, imposing the acquisition of the required disciplines. It is above all this awareness of their responsibilities that predominated among the Spanish anarchists, influenced their struggles, their individual behaviour, their propaganda among, and organisation of, the workers in the countryside and in the towns, and their invincible persistence in the struggle waged for a better world and a happier mankind. Without these qualities all the intelligence and techniques in the world would not have been of much use."