Durruti

[Kukulofori]

Who is he and why is he famous?

All the Wikis I've checked have on him is a few cool quotes, nothing that makes him stick out from any other revolutionary of the time.

[Pogue]

He led the most succesful column of the anarchist militias in the Spanish Civil War and was a charismatic figure in the revolution.

[x359594]

...All the Wikis I've checked have on him is a few cool quotes, nothing that makes him stick out from any other revolutionary of the time.

Durruti was a metal worker and member of the CNT-FAI; he was active in France and South America before returning to Spain where he organized a notable militia column as Pogue noted.

The evidence is that Durruti regarded himself as just another revolutionary of his time. I would guess that his fame is a result of his untimely death and the use made of his reputation by FAIstas of various factions to advance their views on various organizational matters.

Still, his biography has a certain amount of drama and excitement that one associates with a man of action, and his blue collar proletarian background sets him apart from revolutionary intellectuals of the era such as Victor Serge.

[thejambo1]

he was a fucking class act.simple.:thumbup:

[DDR]

Buenaventura Durruti was a robber of banks with Joan Garcia Oliver and Ascaso (Los Solidarios they were called) Their heists were in France and Argentina. The three of them joined the CNt-FAI and were very important in the Spanish Revolution.

[RadioRaheem84]

Durruti was the man! A true revolutionary!

[Devrim]

Still, his biography has a certain amount of drama and excitement that one associates with a man of action, and his blue collar proletarian background sets him apart from revolutionary intellectuals of the era such as Victor Serge.
that is a pretty harsh description of Serge. He also had a blue collar background and was a printer by trade. Try Reading his autobiography 'Memoirs of a Revolutionary'.
Devrim

[x359594]

that is a pretty harsh description of Serge. He also had a blue collar background and was a printer by trade. Try Reading his autobiography 'Memoirs of a Revolutionary'.
Devrim

I didn't mean to be harsh on Serge, only to contrast Durruti's activities during a specific period with those of a fellow revolutionary, just as dedicated, but working in the realm of propaganda and analysis.

[Nwoye]

I'm curious to know how anarchists and other Durruti sympathizers feel about his column's violent collectivization of agriculture.

[x359594]

I'm curious to know how anarchists and other Durruti sympathizers feel about his column's violent collectivization of agriculture.

While there's general agreement that Durruti used violence to expropriate landlords, there's some controversy as to whether or not the Durruti Column used coercion on the peasantry to achive collectivization. Below is an excerpt from The Revolution and Civil War in Spain by Pierre Broue and Emile Temime, Trotskyist sympathizers:

Collectivization in the Countryside
"The Anarchists in Puigcerda who had collectivized the shops had not touched the farms of La Cerdaiia. This was an early example of the immense variety of solutions brought to bear in this field.

"In actual fact there was, during and after the Revolution, a widespread move toward rural collectivization which remained one of the points most passionately debated by protagonists and spectators alike. For some, mainly Anarchists, collectivization was the result of a powerful voluntary association movement inspired by propaganda and the collectivist example of their groups. For others, Communists and Republicans, agrarian, collectivization was, in most cases, imposed by force, under terror, by militias and Anarchist action groups. 'Neutral' observers were equally divided: the Socialist Prats, the Independent Labour party MP Fenner Brockway, and the Italian Socialist Carlo Rosselli sang the praises of the Aragon collectives, in their view undoubtedly the result of peasant wishes. On the other hand, Borkenau, though he could hardly be accused of sympathy for the themes of Communist propaganda, thought that, apart from the La Mancha provinces, collectivization had been imposed on the peasants through terror.

"It must be recognized that there are strong arguments in support of both theories. First of all, the form of collective exploitation was not a new one. The seizures of land that had taken place before the Civil War had always been followed by an attempt at collective farming. The two peasant un,ion organizations, in the CNT and the UGT, had come out in favor of collectivization-voluntary, it is true. The most determined opponents of collectivization, the Communists, created a new peasant organization in the Levante out of nothing in order to fight the movement.lO Finally, the collectives that came into being during the summer of 1936 sometimes lasted until the end of the Civil War, and were in certain, cases reconstituted after their dissolution.

"Elsewhere, Andalusia, which could have been fertile ground for collectives, fell into the hands of the Generals very early on, and neither the Levante, Catalonia, nor Aragon provided particularly favorable conditions for such experiments. We know that they were often the scene of violent clashes between 'collectivists' and 'individuals,' which recurred frequently in 1937.

"Here too there were many aspects to the situation. The massacre of big proprietors with which the collectivization of land frequently began--especially with Durruti and his column--did not mean that it was not voluntary. The massacres created the material conditions for collectivization, because land thus became available, as well as the psychological conditions, because they provided an opportunity that had until then been sealed off. Terror was one of the levers of the Revolution, and discussion as to whether collectivization was voluntary or compulsory is almost meaningless. Finally, every collectivization was both 'voluntary' and 'compulsory' each time that it was decided by a majority. It must be added that collectivization had without doubt fewer opponents in the early weeks of the Revolution than it had after several months of operation in the somewhat unfavorable circumstances of the war and under constant threats of requisition."

pages 156-157, footnotes omitted, emphasis added.

[Nwoye]

I'm well aware that agrarian collectivization was very popular among poor, landless peasants, and that the spontaneous and voluntary seizure of land was widespread across anarchist controlled areas (parts of Aragon, Catalonia, etc). In most places, as you noted, the process of collectivization spread as peasants saw what successes the collective farms in other regions were - it didn't require any active intervention on part of the CNT or UGT. In parts of Aragon however, Durruti and his column for some reason disregarded this process, and decided that they could just skip the whole "consent" thing and forcibly install their policies. Antony Beevor (who is extremely sympathetic to the anarchists) notes in his The Battle for Spain:
"In Aragon some collectives were installed forcibly by anarchist militia, especially the Durruity column. Their impatience to get the harvest in to feed the cities, as well as the fervour of the beliefs, sometimes led to violence. Aragonese peasants resented being told what to do by overenthusiastic Catalan industrial workers and many of them had fears of Russian-style collectives." - page 112 (http://books.google.com/books?id=VsGtxYCcE2MC&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=durruti+collectivization&source=bl&ots=A1xqC9O-fm&sig=VkcuqmIZ2dHtUOROmhO06VF6QIo&hl=en&ei=3yp0StbhFsb7tgfRqNyWCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#v=onepage&q=durruti%20collectivization&f=false)

[Pogue]

I think your answer would be there then wouldn't it. During the situation of a war where there were thousands of people fighting, the anarchists were impatient to get food going. I don't think there will ever be an organisation in history that wont be forced through circumstance to do something that would seemingly contradict their principles for understandable reasons. Obviously there is a limit on how far you can take this though.

[scarletghoul]

Durruti was like the che of anachism. He was extremely cool.

[Nwoye]

I think your answer would be there then wouldn't it. During the situation of a war where there were thousands of people fighting, the anarchists were impatient to get food going. I don't think there will ever be an organisation in history that wont be forced through circumstance to do something that would seemingly contradict their principles for understandable reasons. Obviously there is a limit on how far you can take this though.
you've always been extremely critical of Lenin and the Bolsheviks for their war communism and centralization correct (and justifiably so)? well how is that any different?

[ellipsis]

I am pretty sure that his military tactics used in the Battle of Madrid influenced/informed Abraham Guillen's writings on urban guerrilla warfare which became the manual for countless South American urban guerrilla groups.