THE SPANISH REVOLUTION
The Two Revolutions
By Sam
Dolgoff
The Anarchist Collectives, Chapter One (N.Y.: Free Life
Editions, 1974)
The Spanish Revolution of 1936-1939 came closer to realizing the
ideal of the free stateless society on a vast scale than any other
revolution in history, including the aborted Russian Revolution of
1917.(1) In fact, they were two very different kinds of revolution. The
Spanish Revolution is an example of a libertarian social revolution where
genuine workers' self-management was successfully tried. It represents a
way of organizing society that is increasingly important today. The
Bolshevik Revolution, by contrast, was controlled by an elite party and
was a political revolution. It set the doleful pattern for the
authoritarian state capitalist revolutions in Eastern Europe, Asia
(China, Korea, Vietnam), and Latin America (Cuba).
The Spanish Revolution thus marks a turning point in revolutionary
history. Andres Nin (2) conceded that it was "a proletarian revolution
more profound even than the Russian Revolution itself." (Broue and
Temime, p. 170) Yet it has been virtually ignored for over a quarter
century: overshadowed by the Civil War or relegated to the "dustbin of
history" as an '!unsuccessful" revolution. Its significance is only now
being adequately evaluated.
It is highly important for those interested in the study of modern
revolutions to grasp the significance of social revolution in Spain. By
comparing it with Marxist-Leninist doctrine and the Bolshevik example,
certain themes will be introduced that will emphasize the Spanish
Revolution's place as a libertarian revolution. These themes will point
to the relevance of the Spanish Revolution to our own concerns with the
movement for workers' self-management or workers' control. Gaston Leval,
the French anarchist who participated in and studied the social
revolution at first hand, admirably summarizes the achievements of the
Spanish workers:
Persuaded that we were fated to lose the war unleashed by Franco
Fascism, I was determined to make a detailed study of the Revolution and
record for future generations the results of this unique experience: to
study on the spot, in the village collectives, in the factories, and in
the socialized industries, the constructive work of the Spanish
Revolution.... In Spain during almost three years, despite a civil war
that took a million lives, despite the opposition of the , political
parties (republicans, left and right Catalan separatists, socialists,
Communists, Basque and Valencian regionalists, petty bourgeoisie, etc.),
this idea of libertarian communism was put into effect. Very quickly more
than 60% of the land was collectively cultivated by the peasants
themselves, without landlords, without bosses, and without instituting
capitalist competition to spur production. In almost all the industries,
factories, mills, workshops, transportation services, public services,
and utilities, the rank and file workers, their revolutionary committees,
and their syndicates reorganized and administered production,
distribution, and public services without capitalists, high salaried
managers, or the authority of the state.
Even more: the various agrarian and industrial collectives
immediately instituted economic equality in accordance with the essential
principle of communism, "From each according to his ability and to each
according to his needs." They coordinated their efforts through free
association in whole regions, created new wealth, increased production
(especially in agriculture), built more schools, and bettered public
services. They instituted not bourgeois formal democracy but genuine
grass roots functional libertarian democracy, where each individual
participated directly in the revolutionary reorganization of social life.
They replaced the war between men, "survival of the fittest," by the
universal practice of mutual aid, and replaced rivalry by the principle
of solidarity....
This experience, in which about eight million people directly or
indirectly participated, opened a new way of life to those who sought an
alternative to anti-social capitalism on the one hand, and totalitarian
state bogus socialism on the other. . (5) .(Espagne Libertaire, P 11)
This experience in revolution explodes a number of widely held
Marxian myths. For instance, that a social revolution could come only
when the right stage of economic development prevailed (and then only
with the help of a very centralized party dominated by a political
elite). In Spain, however, the revolution immediately manifested the very
different character anticipated by Bakunin:
The constructive tasks of the Social Revolution, the creation of new
forms of social life, can emerge only from the living practical
experiences of the grass roots organizations which will build the new
society according to their manifold needs and aspirations. (Dolgoff, p. 1 80)
But spontaneity is not enough. The Spanish revolutionaries (as
Bakunin himself repeatedly stressed) realized that it takes time for the
"new forms of social life" to emerge, and to establish "grass roots
organizations." To survive in a hostile atmosphere, to incarnate
themselves into the revolutionary process, the new forms of organization
must be prepared long before the outbreak of the revolution. And so they
were. Seventy-five years of militant struggles and intense anarchist
educational work prepared the Spanish industrial and land workers to meet
the problems of the Social Revolution. (See "The Libertarian Tradition"
below )
Trotsky himself conceded the potency of this revolutionary approach
by comparing Spain in 1936 to Russia in 1917:
The Spanish proletariat displayed fighting qualities of the highest
order . . . economically, politically and culturally, the Spanish workers
from the very beginning of the Revolution showed themselves to be not
inferior, but superior to the Russian proletariat at the beginning of the
October Revolution in 1917. (Broue and Temime, p. 131 in the French
edition ) (3)
As indicated by Leval, the scope of the Spanish Revolution embraced
the economic and political life of millions in the most populous and
strategic areas of Republican Spain. About 75% of Spanish industry was
concentrated in Catalonia, the stronghold of the anarchist labor
movement This refutes decisively the allegation that anarchist
organizational principles are not applicable to industrial areas, and if
at all, only in primitive agrarian societies or in isolated experimental
communities (See chapters 6 and 7 below on urban industrial
collectivization).
The libertarian revolution was even more far reaching in the rural
areas. This experience explodes the hoary Marxist dogma that only highly
industrialized countries are ripe for communism. Augustin Souchy
concludes in one of his many books on the Spanish Revolution that:
The Marxist theory that Socialism will first be realized by the
masses of the industrialized proletariat, next by the petty bourgeoisie,
and last by the peasants is false.... The Aragon peasants have proven
that industrialization is not the indispensable prerequisite for the
establishment of libertarian communism.... Libertarian communism was
almost entirely realized in the smaller rural areas.... (De Julio a
Julio, p. 172)
Nor are the peasants an inherently backward class as the Marxists
would have us believe. All observers agree that:
In the work of creation, transportation, and socialization, the
peasants demonstrated a degree of social consciousness much superior to
that of the city worker. (Leval, Ne Franco ne Stalin, p. 320)
This is quite different from the usual view of the revolutionary role
of the peasants. A unique characteristic of the Spanish Revolution was
the achievement of close cooperation between rural and urban workers.
Years of agitation and education by the anarchists were very effective in
dealing with what is one of the most crucial problems of every
revolution: the relations between the industrial proletariat and the
agricultural workers, between the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist
movements and the peasants. The intermeshing of local, regional, and
national federations of peasant collectives (which included 90% of the
poorest peasants) with the federations of urban socialized enterprises
was the culmination of a process which traces back to the latter half of
the 19th century.
The impression that Spanish anarchism was largely a rural movement,
though exaggerated, is by no means unfounded. The terms "rural anarchism"
and "rural anarcho-syndicalism" have often, and rightfully, been used to
designate Spanish peasant rebellions. A few examples:
In 1881, farm workers. . . constituted the largest single
occupational grouping in the new Anarchist Federation.... By September
1882, 20,915 of the 57,934 members were agrarian workers.... The
reemergence of rural anarchism in 1903 brought with it more continuous
and widespread labor agitation than any previously recorded in Andalusia.
The most serious outbreaks occurred in the traditional anarchist
strongholds of Seville and Cadiz.... From 1913 to 1917 . . .
anarcho-syndicalist locals sprang up both in the Levant and Aragon In
1919 there were at least thirty-three such locals in Valencia alone....
In Cordova [1920], for example, workers' organizations existed in 61 of
the 75 townships and claimed a membership of 55,382 out of a total active
rural population of 1 30,000. (Malefakis, pp. 139, 140, 148)
During this whole period while "the anarchists had awakened the
peasantry," the Spanish socialists, like their prophet Marx, "largely
ignored the existence of the agrarian problem." (Malefakis, p. 290) Marx
placed all his hopes for revolution upon the industrial proletariat. He
had no confidence in the creative revolutionary capacity of the
agricultural workers. "Rural idiocy" was one of his favorite expressions.
From the experience of the Bolshevik Revolution it should by now be
axiomatic that a revolution which provokes the resistance of the
peasants, that cannot or will not establish solidarity between land and
city workers, must inevitably degenerate into a counter-revolutionary
dictatorship. The disastrous consequences of Lenin's forced requisition
of peasant crops and livestock precluded such solidarity. The peasants
retaliated by starving the .cities, planting only enough for their needs,
slaughtering livestock sorely needed by the cities, and finally forcing
Lenin to reverse himself and institute his semi-capitalistic "New
Economic Policy." Stalin's forced "collectivization" of land and the
liquidation of millions of "Kulaks" (which all but crippled the economy
for many years) proceeded along the same authoritarian lines and are too
well documented to need further comment. The "Kholkhozes" (collectives)
established by Stalin are not genuine collectives, that is, created and
managed by the workers themselves. In the tradition of Lenin and Stalin,
they are, like all the other "soviet" social and economic institutions,
simply creatures of the state.
The pattern is all too familiar. The workers must obey the orders of
the bureaucrats appointed by the state, who are in turn obliged to carry
out the instructions of the political commissars. Payment is arbitrarily
fixed according to norms (production goals, the speedup system)
determined by the state planners. (See the selection below on "The
Political and Organization of Society" in which a Spanish anarchist
contrasts this authoritarian approach with the libertarian approach
actually put into practice in Spain )
The Spanish Revolution shattered yet another Marxist dogma, that of
the "transition period." During the first stage in the transition to full
communism, so the doctrine goes, means can be separated from ends. Under
"socialism," it is necessary to retain some of the main evils of
capitalism. Thus workers will be paid not according to their needs but
according to how much they produce. In line with this theory the
Bolsheviks made no serious attempt to abolish the wage system or even to
equalize wages.
In less than three years the libertarian collectives did away with
the wage system. Where this was not possible because of the sabotage of
the Republican government, the bourgeoisie and their socialist and
Communist allies, they equalized income to the greatest possible extent
(this was true of most of the socialized urban enterprises). The
Revolution instituted the "family wage," under which commodities were
distributed and services rendered not according to the amount of labor
performed, but according to the number and needs of the family members.
Similar arrangements were made for individuals living alone.
More than half a century after the October Revolution the piecework
system still prevails. One need only compare the much higher earnings of
a "Stakhanovite" (piecework "hero of labor") as against the low wages of
the less "heroic" average worker. Or better yet, compare the privileges
enjoyed by the not so new class of high ranking party officials,
bureaucrats, technocrats, military officers, and the prostituted
"intelligentsia," with their apartments in town, their "dachas" in the
country, their domestic servants (and the rest), with the low living
standards of ordinary Soviet families.
Evils "temporarily" tolerated become permanently encrusted and
institutionalized into the totalitarian-state apparatus, administered by
a self-perpetuating ruling class which can be dislodged only by another
revolution.
Contrary to Marxist-Leninist doctrine, the experience of the Spanish
Revolution clearly demonstrated (even during this famous transitional
period from capitalism to socialism) the practical superiority of
libertarian organizational procedures to authoritarian dictatorial
methods. Cooperation and free agreement from below get better results
than rule by decree from the top down. The Marxist-Leninists did not even
begin to grasp the most elementary principles of social reconstruction,
of how to get things moving again. Adept as they were at political
chicanery and seizing power, these "builders of socialism" had not the
foggiest notion of how to organize even a village collective, much less
to restore the economic life of the great Russian nation. For example:
Andres Nin liked to tell his companions that the return of public
services to normal working order had been incomparably faster in
Barcelona in 1936 than in Moscow in 1917. (Broue and Temime, p. 1 70)
The purged Bolshevik "left oppositionist" Victor Serge (an
ex-anarchist who had not entirely rejected all he had learned) criticized
the criminal inefficiency of the Bolshevik administrators in dealing with
the economic crisis. In seeking another resolution to the economic
problems, he illustrated the relevance of libertarian organizational
principles:
Through its intolerance and its arrogation of an absolute monopoly of
power and initiative in all fields, the Bolshevik regime was floundering
in its own toils.... Certain industries could have been revived merely by
appealing to the initiative of groups of producers and consumers, by
freeing the State-strangled cooperatives, and inviting various
associations to take over the management of different branches of
economic activity.... In a word, I was arguing for a "Communism of
associations"-in contrast to Communism of the State variety.... l thought
of the total plan not as something to be dictated by the State from on
high but father as resulting from the harmonizing, by congresses and
specialized assemblies, of initiatives from below. (pp. 1 47-1 48)
Unfortunately, these creative forms of social life (unions, soviets,
factory committees, workers' councils, cooperatives, and other grass
roots organizations), exhausted by years of war and privation, were not
able to withstand the onslaughts of the well-organized Communist Party
dictatorship. Valiant attempts-which took such forms as the Kronstadt
rebellion, peasant uprisings, strikes, and passive resistance-to save the
real Russian Revolution from its Bolshevik usurpers, were crushed.
The practical application of the libertarian principles that Serge
talks about is precisely the achievement of the Spanish Revolution, in
stark contrast to the Bolshevik experience (and the experience of most
revolutions in this century). In Spain collectives were formed
spontaneously according to Spain's historic traditions and
anarchist-federalist principles. The Spanish Revolution demonstrated in
practice that libertarian communist measures could be introduced at once.
The Revolution must simultaneously destroy the old order and immediately
take on a federalistic and anarchistic direction. Revolutionaries
exploring new roads to freedom are increasingly inclined to take these
factors into account.
These collectives were not conceived according to any single plan or
forced to conform to a particular framework. Freedom implies variety, and
the reader will see in the selections that follow, the great variety of
ways the workers devised to meet their everyday problems. From his
observations made during his visits to rural collectives and urban
socialized enterprises, Souchy concluded that:
Economic variety, i.e., the coexistence of collective and privately
conducted enterprises, (4) will not adversely affect the economy. But
economic variety is, on the contrary, the true manifestation and
indispensable precondition for a free society. Regimentation, the
imposition of a uniform economic system by and for the benefit of the
state, works out inevitably to the detriment of the people.... (5)
(Nacht uber Spanien, pp. 151-152)
The anarchist Diego Abad de Santillan is somewhat more explicit:
In each locality the degree of communism, collectivism, or mutualism
(6) will depend upon the conditions prevailing. Why dictate rules? We
who make freedom our banner cannot deny it in the economy. Therefore
there must be free experimentation, free show of initiative and
suggestions, as well as freedom of organization.... We are not interested
in how the workers, employees, and technicians of a factory will organize
themselves. That is their affair. But what is fundamental is that from
the first moment of Revolution there exist a proper cohesion
(coordination) of all the productive and distributive forces. (After the
Revolution, pp. 97, 98, 99)
More than any other revolution, the Spanish Revolution succeeded in
effectively coordinating just such a mixed economy under conditions of
freedom and a minimum of friction. Many individuals, petty peasant
proprietors, were induced to join the collectives, not by force, but by
witnessing the advantages of cooperation. The realistic policies and the
humanitarian spirit of the Spanish libertarian collectives also earned
the cooperation of technical, professional, and scientific workers in
reorganizing economic life. Friendly relations were established with
those who preferred to remain outside of the collectives.
It is a twofold historic tragedy that the Communist Party, which
aborted the Russian Revolution of 1917, also crushed the Spanish
Revolution of 1936-1939. But this takes us away from the very real
accomplishments and lessons of the Spanish Revolution.
-------------------
1. See page 11 for the distinction between the terms "Russian
Revolution" and "Bolshevik Revolution."
2. With loaquin Maurin, he founded the Spanish Communist Party, from
which they split off to organize the dissident Marxist Party of Workers
Unity-the POUM. He was murdered by the Stalinists in t937.
3 I was impelled to translate this myself due to the distortion of
Trotsky's remark (p. 170 in the English edition) by using the word
"military" in place of the word "fighting"
4. Souchy is referring to enterprises that did not employ wage labor.
5. Economic variety in a free society is not to be equated with the
greater or lesser measure of private enterprise which peasants in
"communist" countries forced their rulers to grant on threat of starving
the cities. Nor for that matter is it to be equated with the "variety"
claimed in capitalist countries.
6. Mutualism is the economic doctrine of Proudhon and his followers.