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View Full Version : Did Anarchists Criminalise Money in Spain?



PoliticalNightmare
16th October 2010, 13:17
According to Mises, Spanish Anarchists introduced the death penalty for using money during the 1936 Revolution. This isn't true, surely?


EDIT -

Cheers, fellahs. I didn't think it was true, somehow.

Also, it was Rothbard, not Mises, my apologies.

Here is the exact quote:


It is no wonder therefore that the term "anarchism" has received a bad press. The leading anarchists, particularly in Europe, have always been of the left-wing variety, and today the anarchists are exclusively in the left-wing camp. Add to that the tradition of revolutionary violence stemming from European conditions, and it is little wonder that anarchism is discredited. Anarchism was politically very powerful in Spain, and during the Spanish Civil War, anarchists established communes and collectives wielding coercive authority. One of their first steps was to abolish the use of money on the pain of a death penalty. It is obvious that the supposed anarchist hatred of coercion had gone very much awry. The reason was the insoluble contradiction between the antistate and the antiproperty tenets of left-wing anarchy.

And here is the source: http://mises.org/daily/2801

What a load of bull. To think I was prepared to consider Rothbard an intellectual and to actually read his works with an open mind, forgetting our political differences. The whole time I was reading that article I was finding myself face palming without even thinking about it.

revolution inaction
16th October 2010, 14:28
no

http://libcom.org/history/spain-1936-end-anarchist-syndicalsim-subversion#comment-400341

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hZmQ9gN25dQ/TKd2xjbuOGI/AAAAAAAABdQ/DRm4kAmJnSw/s1600/Nota=UGT-CNT.JPG

ContrarianLemming
16th October 2010, 15:18
thanks^

utter bullshit, they used money.

can u link to the page on mises that says that? for lulz

WeAreReborn
18th October 2010, 01:26
I heard they did somewhere as well, I figured it was Capitalistic propaganda so I never looked into it thanks for the link though Revolutionary Inaction. I also heard that they slaughtered those who used money. Man propaganda in the wrong hands is a *****. :(

gorillafuck
18th October 2010, 01:43
They didn't use money in the standard capitalist free market way, but they used labour vouchers yeah. And lol at death penalty for use of money.

syndicat
18th October 2010, 06:41
the immediate aim of the CNT labor federation in the revolution was the suelda unica, the single wage, that is, everyone paid the same. they only achieved this in some industries or towns.

Rothbard or whoever is probably talking about Aragon. in Aragon, some of the collectivized communities did initially attempt to do away with money. but the idea this was "on pain of death" is ridiculous. if you can't buy anything in the town with money, why would it be used? actually these villages found this elimination of money to present great problems. how could they exchange with industries that produced things they wanted? very often they introduced local script which meant that it could only be used locally. but this also produced problems.

Unkut
20th October 2010, 06:18
Seems like Rothbard was a dishonest historian. Notice how there's no citation for his claim.

vader
20th October 2010, 14:33
Some communes eliminated money (but as syndicat said, a death penalty is bullshit), some used it (legal currency printed by republicans), some printed their own local currency and some used labor vouches (as Zeekloid said).

Raúl Duke
20th October 2010, 23:02
Talking about the death penalty, I did have heard of the Spanish Anarchists using the death penalty (someone used the argument that it's because it was more humane or something versus putting people in jail) but I'm not sure if its true...

But I doubt they used it over money. Even in places where money was 'abolished' all they had to do was just reject cash; no need to execute anyone.