Spanish Civil War Anarchist

[The Partisan]

Does anyone else find their actions during the Spanish Civil War ridiculous? - Revolution within a revolution - Not fighting back fascism to the full extent of their being

[x359594]

Does anyone else find their actions during the Spanish Civil War ridiculous?...

The entire bourgeois press of the day ridiculed the Spanish anarchists to the extent that it acknowledged them at all, and down to the present any number of self styled junior communists and their bourgeois confreres prefer ridicule to analysis.

Within the Spanish anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movements there were three distinct points of view on the question of war and revolution. The first, probably the majority view, was that the war would be over in a matter of weeks, after all, a few days had been enough to rout the army in Barcelona and other industrial centers, and that the social revolution and Libertarian Communism as debated and adopted by the CNT’s national congress at Zaragoza in February, five months previously, was an inseparable aspect of the struggle against economic and social oppression. Thus, the movement should proceed immediately to socialize the factories, the land and their communities.

The second position was that held by members of the regional, national and peninsular committees of the CNT-FAI, the so-called 'notables’, office holders such as Horacio Prieto, Mariano Rodriguez, Federica Montseny, Diego Abad de Santillan, García Oliver, etc. They anticipated a lengthy war and opposed implementing Libertarian Communism until the war was won. They opted instead for compromising alliances with the bourgeois Republican, Catalanist and Stalinist parties.

Their argument was that such a strategy would prevent a situation developing wherein a victorious but exhausted CNT might be overwhelmed by another political force which had been more sparing with its forces i.e., the Spanish Communist Party.

It was a fatal strategy that quickly absorbed them, undermined their principles and transformed what had hitherto been a great instrument of the working class into just another rigid bureaucratic institution.

The third body of opinion, a minority one held by militants such as Durruti, Camillo Berneri, Jaime Balius, and others (and one which I incidentally agree with) also anticipated a lengthy war because of the involvement of Germany and Italy — but held that war and revolution were inseparable.

Only a libertarian revolution could finally destroy fascism because to do so meant destroying the state, since fascism only means a certain mode of the state: all states turn fascist when the threat to the privilege that the state protects — and to a degree also embodies — becomes strong enough, which happens when the participatory procedures of the state can no longer secure that privilege. Fascism, in other words, is enforced class collaboration, as opposed to the voluntary class collaboration of parliamentary government.

[The Partisan]

The entire bourgeois press of the day ridiculed the Spanish anarchists to the extent that it acknowledged them at all, and down to the present any number of self styled junior communists and their bourgeois confreresprefer ridicule to analysis.

Within the Spanish anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movements there were three distinct points of view on the question of war and revolution. The first, probably the majority view, was that the war would be over in a matter of weeks, after all, a few days had been enough to rout the army in Barcelona and other industrial centers, and that the social revolution and Libertarian Communism as debated and adopted by the CNT’s national congress at Zaragoza in February, five months previously, was an inseparable aspect of the struggle against economic and social oppression. Thus, the movement should proceed immediately to socialize the factories, the land and their communities.

The second position was that held by members of the regional, national and peninsular committees of the CNT-FAI, the so-called 'notables’, office holders such as such as Horacio Prieto, Mariano Rodriguez, Federica Montseny, Diego Abad de Santillan, García Oliver, etc. They anticipated a lengthy war and opposed implementing Libertarian Communism until the war was won. They opted instead for compromising alliances with the bourgeois Republican, Catalanist and Stalinist parties.

Their argument was that such a strategy would prevent a situation developing wherein a victorious but exhausted CNT might be overwhelmed by another political force which had been more sparing with its forces i.e., the Spanish Communist Party.

It was a fatal strategy that quickly absorbed them, undermined their principles and transformed what had hitherto been a great instrument of the working class into just another rigid bureaucratic institution.

The third body of opinion, a minority one held by militants such as Durruti, Camillo Berneri, Jaime Balius, and others (and one which I incidentally agree with) also anticipated a lengthy war because of the involvement of Germany and Italy — but held that war and revolution were inseparable.
Only a libertarian revolution could finally destroy fascism because to do so meant destroying the state, since fascism only means a certain mode of the state: all states turn fascist when the threat to the privilege that the state protects — and to a degree also embodies — becomes strong enough, which happens when the participatory procedures of the state can no longer secure that privilege. Fascism, in other words, is enforced class collaboration, as opposed to the voluntary class collaboration of parliamentary government.

Thanks for the post. I wonder what your feelings are on the senseless killing of people on the right? A lot of these people were innocent business men...

[x359594]

...I wonder what your feelings are on the senseless killing of people on the right? A lot of these people were innocent business men...

I'm currently reading The Spanish Holocaust by Paul Preston, a detailed study of repression during the war. Most of the rear guard violence in the Republican zone occurred during the first three months of the fighting. In the early weeks there was unorganized score settling and paybacks that were later handled by tribunals. Many of the accused were released because the charges were not proven.

On the anti-fascist side, virtually all the revolutionary organizations that established militias exercised repression against pro-fascist individuals. Accused fascists were brought before revolutionary tribunals and allowed to defend themselves. Some were executed, most were kept in detention. When there were summary executions it was in response to specific fascist atrocities or news of same brought to the Republican zone by refugees.

Preston gives a figure of 49,000 dead in rear guard reprisals of one sort or another in the Republican zone. By contrast, the fascists executed about 300,000 in areas under their control.

[Comrade Jandar]

Does anyone else find their actions during the Spanish Civil War ridiculous? - Revolution within a revolution - Not fighting back fascism to the full extent of their being

You have it backwards; every party's or group's actions, except the anarchists, were ridiculous. The Spanish Stalinists, who were taking orders directly from Moscow, did everything to stop a social revolution in Spain because the USSR was trying to cozy up to the western powers. And your "innocent business men" comment made me laugh.

[The Partisan]

You have it backwards; every party's or group's actions, except the anarchists, were ridiculous. The Spanish Stalinists, who were taking orders directly from Moscow, did everything to stop a social revolution in Spain because the USSR was trying to cozy up to the western powers. And your "innocent business men" comment made me laugh.

Why would it make you laugh when it came from Anarchist who were there?

[Omsk]

USSR was trying to cozy up to the western powers


Is that why the USSR had a dual policy and sometimes ignored the non-intervention policy? The USSR was watching it's yard and it tried to fund those who had the actual power to stop Franco.

[Comrade Jandar]

Why would it make you laugh when it came from Anarchist who were there?

It made me laugh because "innocent businessmen" is an oxymoron. My motto for after the revolution is to either "prole up or get out."

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

Is that why the USSR had a dual policy and sometimes ignored the non-intervention policy? The USSR was watching it's yard and it tried to fund those who had the actual power to stop Franco.
“the price the Republicans paid for the Soviet aid was the very factor which led to the Republic’s eventual demise. In exchange for military aid, Stalin demanded the transformation of the Republic into a prototype for the so-called People’s Democracies of postwar Eastern and Central Europe.”

“that Stalin sought from the very beginning to control events in Spain and to manage or prevent the spread of actual social revolution”.

- Spain Betrayed : The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War

[A Revolutionary Tool]

I detect a troll, "innocent businessmen" lol!

[Omsk]

And those two little baby quotes mean nothing.The USSR sent a lot of aid to Spain, although the diplomatic posts of the USSR were full of Revisionists like Litvinov.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Spam posts deleted, keep on track to only full answers (not one liners and emoticons).

[Comrade Jandar]

And those two little baby quotes mean nothing.The USSR sent a lot of aid to Spain, although the diplomatic posts of the USSR were full of Revisionists like Litvinov.

The IMF gives aid to developing countries and as we all know, they have the best of intentions. The USSR got caught up in bourgeois geo-politics and this therefore set boundaries as to how much they could aid revolutions and actually practice internationalism.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Spam posts deleted, keep on track to only full answers (not one liners and emoticons).

This is a spam thread. Who comes on and immediately goes to try and creating a flame war and sectarian conflicts? This should just be deleted.

[x359594]

Between July 21 and the end of August 1936, the so-called ‘notables’ of the CNT-FAI regional, national and peninsular committees (Federica Montseny, Mariano Vázquez, Diego Abad de Santillán and, later Juan García Oliver, etc.) abandoned all pretence of being revolutionaries. Instead, they created a vested interest structure that served, primarily, to apply the brakes to the spontaneous revolutionary activity of the union rank and file and to repress the revolutionary activists of the Libertarian Youth, the confederal defence cadres, the action- and affinity groups. They promoted ‘Anti-fascist unity’ and state power at the expense of anarchist principles and values, and imposed, arbitrarily, the hegemony of the Catalan CNT–FAI leadership over the local revolutionary committees and the general assemblies, not only of Catalonia, but of Aragón as well, particularly the revolutionary Regional Defence Council of Aragón. Their principal aim being to secure and perpetuate their power base, even at the expense of the anarchist principles and values that had inspired the largest mass labor union in Spanish history. For them the instrumental means had become the organisational end. Not only that; they were now complicit and compromised players in a re-invigorated state dominated not just by middle- and upper-class conservative and anti-working class social democrats, but also by Stalin’s agents serving the interests of Soviet foreign policy.

[PhoenixAsh]

succesful troll is succesful.

Thread closed. OP banned.