Spanish Revolution of 1936

Overview

Orwell's account

Social revolution

"I was impressed by the strength of the C.N.T. It was unnecessary to tell me that it was the largest and most vital of the working-class organisations in Spain. The large industries were clearly, in the main, in the hands of the C.N.T.--railways, road transport, shipping, engineering, textiles, electricity, building, agriculture. At Valencia the U.G.T. had a larger share of control than at Barcelona, but generally speaking the mass of manual workers belonged to the C.N.T. The U.G.T. membership was more of the type of the 'white-collar' worker...I was immensely impressed by the constructive revolutionary work which is being done by the C.N.T. Their achievement of workers' control in industry is an inspiration. One could take the example of the railways or engineering or textiles...There are still some Britishers and Americans who regard the Anarchists of Spain as impossible, undisciplined, uncontrollable. This is poles away from the truth. The Anarchists of Spain, through the C.N.T., are doing one of the biggest constructive jobs ever done by the working class. At the front they are fighting Fascism. Behind the front they are actually constructing the new Workers' Society. They see that the war against Fascism and the carrying through of the Social Revolution are inseparable. Those who have seen and understand what they are doing must honour them and be grateful to them. They are resisting Fascism. They are at the same time creating the New Workers' Order which is the only alternative to Fascism. That is surely the biggest things now being done by the workers in any part of the world." And in another place: "The great solidarity that existed amongst the Anarchists was due to each individual relying on his own strength and not depending on leadership. The organisations must, to be successful, be combined with a free-thinking people; not a mass, but free individuals."
This was accomplished through widespread expropriation and collectivization of privately owned productive resources, in adherence to the anarchist belief that private property is authoritarian in nature. Spanish Civil War scholar Burnett Bolloten writes of this process:
The economic policies of the anarchist collectives were primarily operated according to the basic communist principle of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". In some places, money was entirely eliminated, to be replaced with vouchers and coupons distributed on the basis of needs rather than individual labor contributions. Bolloten writes of this process also:
Bolloten also quoted anarchist journalist Augustin Souchy that "The characteristic of the majority of CNT collectives is the family wage. Wages are paid according to the needs of the members and not according to the labor performed by each worker." This focus on the needs of members made these conditions anarcho-communist.
Despite the critics clamoring for "maximum efficiency" rather than revolutionary methods, anarchist collectives often produced more than before the collectivization. In Aragon, productivity increased by 20%. The newly liberated zones worked on entirely libertarian principles; decisions were made through councils of ordinary citizens without any bureaucracy. The CNT-FAI leadership was much less radical than rank and file members responsible for these sweeping changes.
The social effects of the revolution were less drastic than the economic ones however; while there were some social changes in larger urban areas, the attitudes of the lower classes remained fairly conservative and there was comparatively little emulation of Russian-style "revolutionary morality".
As the war dragged on, the spirit of the revolution's early days flagged. In part, this was due to the policies of the Communist Party of Spain, which took its cues from the foreign ministry of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, the source of most of the foreign aid received by the Republican side. The Communist policy was that abolition of capitalism should be addressed only after the war. But for the other left-wing parties, particularly the anarchists and POUM, the war and the revolution were the same. Militias of groups which were outspoken against the Soviet position soon found Soviet aid cut off. Partly due to this, the situation in most Republican-held areas slowly began to revert largely to its prewar conditions; in many ways the revolution was over well before Franco's victory in early 1939.

Environmentalism

The Spanish Revolution undertook several environmental reforms which were possibly the largest in the world at the time. Daniel Guerin notes that anarchist territories would diversify crops, extend irrigation, initiate reforestation and start tree nurseries. Once there was a link discovered between air pollution and tuberculosis, the CNT shut down several metal factories.

Criticisms

Criticism of the Spanish Revolution has primarily centered around allegations of coercion by anarchist participants, which critics charge run contrary to libertarian organizational principles. Bolloten claims that CNT–FAI reports overplayed the voluntary nature of collectivization, and ignored the more widespread realities of coercion or outright force as the primary characteristic of anarchist organization.
He also emphasizes the generally coercive nature of the war climate and anarchist military organization and presence in many portions of the countryside as being an element in the establishment of collectivization, even if outright force or blatant coercion was not used to bind participants against their will.
This charge had previously been made by historian Ronald Fraser in his Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War, who commented that direct force was not necessary in the context of an otherwise coercive war climate.
Anarchist sympathizers counter that the presence of a "coercive climate" was an unavoidable aspect of the war that the anarchists cannot be fairly blamed for, and that the presence of deliberate coercion or direct force was minimal, as evidenced by a generally peaceful mixture of collectivists and individualist dissenters who had opted not to participate in collective organization. The latter sentiment is expressed by historian Antony Beevor in his Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939.
Historian Graham Kelsey also maintains that the anarchist collectives were primarily maintained through libertarian principles of voluntary association and organization, and that the decision to join and participate was generally based on a rational and balanced choice made after the destabilization and effective absence of capitalism as a powerful factor in the region.
There is also focus placed by pro-anarchist analysts on the many decades of organization and shorter period of CNT–FAI agitation that was to serve as a foundation for high membership levels throughout anarchist Spain, which is often referred to as a basis for the popularity of the anarchist collectives, rather than any presence of force or coercion that allegedly compelled unwilling persons to involuntarily participate.
Michael Seidman has suggested there were other contradictions with workers' self-management during the Spanish Revolution. He points out that the CNT decided both that workers could be sacked for 'laziness or immorality' and also that all workers should 'have a file where the details of their professional and social personalities will be registered.' He also notes that the CNT Justice Minister, García Oliver, initiated the setting up of 'labour camps', and that even the most principled anarchists, the Friends of Durruti, advocated "forced labour". However, Garcia Oliver explained his idealistic vision of justice in Valencia on 31 December 1936; common criminals would find redemption in prison through libraries, sport and theatre. Political prisoners would achieve rehabilitation by building fortifications and strategic roads, bridges and railways, and would get decent wages. Garcia Oliver believed it made more sense for fascist lives to be saved than for them to be sentenced to death. This is in contrast to the policy of mass annihilation of political opponents enacted in the rebel zone during the war.
Anarchist authors have sometimes understated the problems that the working class sometimes faced during the Spanish Revolution during the early period of the movement. For example, while Gaston Leval does admit that the collectives imposed a 'work discipline' that was 'strict', he then restricts this comment to a mere footnote. Other radical commentators, however, have incorporated the limitations of the Spanish Revolution into their theories of anti-capitalist revolution. Gilles Dauvé, for example, uses the Spanish experience to argue that to transcend capitalism, workers must completely abolish both wage labour and capital rather than just self-manage them.

Citations

Film

• Vivir la utopía. Juan Gamero, 1997.