1st post: anarchist-Marxist convergence

[JDHURF]

I am new to this forum and this is my first post. I am a libertarian-socialist, social anarchist, council communist or however you would like to refer to the anti-state, socialist left. I figured that the best way for me to introduce myself and my political views would be to post an analysis I posted at another forum discussing the convergence between specific anarchist and Marxist tendencies.

I have noticed that what Chomsky pointed out is correct, that there is a fundamental convergence between anarcho-syndicalism – best expressed by Rocker’s work of the same title – and left Marxism, such as Pannekoek’s council communism. In fact, I am uncertain what differentiates Pannekoek’s council communism from Rocker’s anarcho-syndicalism.

Both posit that capitalism must be dismantled, socialism being the alternative. That strikes are the primary method by which the proletariat achieves class consciousness and is, as Rocker claims, “the focal point of the political struggle.”[1] Pannekoek explains “…mass strikes of the workers tend to become most serious attacks against State power, that fortress of capitalism, and most efficient factors in increasing the consciousness and social power of the working class.”[2] Rocker concurs stating that, “the strike is for the workers not only a means for the defense of immediate economic interests, it is also a continuous schooling for their powers of resistance, showing them every day that every least right has to be won by unceasing struggle against the existing system.”[3]

It was this premise that was the cause of conflict between Kautsky and Luxemburg. Luxemburg rightly took the position that the mass strike was foundational to any revolutionary socialist movement, as she said “the mass strike is the first natural, impulsive form of every great revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and the more highly developed the antagonism is between capital and labour, the more effective and decisive must mass strikes become.”[4]

Both Pannekoek and Rocker conclude that workers’ councils have and shall be established spontaneously and organically through trade unionism and strikes and that these councils are in embryo the organism of the future socialist society. They realize that organization is required in order to achieve workers’ control and that it is through strikes and the subsequent organic formation of workers’ councils that this organization will develop.

As Pannekoek explains, “In a big strike, all the workers cannot assemble in one meeting. They choose delegates to act as a committee. Such a committee is only the executive organ of the strikers; it is continually in touch with them and has to carry out the decisions of the strikers. Each delegate at every moment can be replaced by others; such a committee never becomes an independent power. In such a way, common action as one body can be secured, and yet the workers have all decisions in their own hands.”[5]

He goes on to explain that “Councils are the form of organization only for…the working class as a whole..They originate and grow up along with the first action of a revolutionary character. With the development of revolution, their importance and their functions increase. At first they may appear as simple strike committees…In a universal strike the functions of these committees are enlarged. Now delegates of all the factories and plants have to discuss and to decide about all the conditions of the fight…When the revolution develops to such power that the State power is seriously affected, then the workers’ councils have to assume political functions…They are the central bodies of the workers’ power…”[6]

Rocker points out that “The lancehead of the labour movement is, therefore...the trader union, toughened by daily combat and permeated by Socialist spirit. Only in the realm of economy are the workers able to display their full social strength, for it is their activity as producers which holds together the whole social structure, and guarantees the existence of society at all...the trade union is by no means a mere transitory phenomenon bound up with the duration of capitalist society, it is the germ of the Socialist society of the future, the elementary school of Socialism in general. Every new social structure makes organs for itself in the body of the old organism. Without this preliminary any social evolution is unthinkable."[7]

The points of convergence are many and the examples here are merely first approximations. I would be interested in discussing the similarities further.

[chimx]

You are embarrassing yourself. Nobody is stopping you from posting the url. We just limit the use of tags to thwart spam bots. Go make 20 posts in chitchat and try again if it bugs you so much.

As to your post, have both groups really been that opposed to each other historically? They historically developed out of distinct movements. While they may be similar, the historical context of both movements is important.

Also, most "left Marxists" don't like trade unions. We have a discussion forum for left communists on this site called "left communists" and there is a thread on unions if you are interested.

Again, for someone that is new to our community, you are being incredibly hostile.

[Sentinel]

Topic split -- the Politics forum is not for discussions on message board policies. Such issues belong in the Member's Forum.

Why can't new members post links? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-cant-new-t72961/index.html?t=72961)

[Ultra-Violence]

REDSTAR2000

nuff said

[JDHURF]

Also, most "left Marxists" don't like trade unions. We have a discussion forum for left communists on this site called "left communists" and there is a thread on unions if you are interested.
If by "most 'left Marxists'" you are referring to posters on this forum, maybe, but the line of theoreticians of left-Marxists, ranging from Pannekoek to Mattick, take quite a different position. They both rightly diagnose and critique the corruptibility of the union leaders and bureaucracy, but that is quite a bit different from disliking trade unions, which they didn't do.

[Leo]

If by "most 'left Marxists'" you are referring to posters on this forum, maybe, but the line of theoreticians of left-Marxists, ranging from Pannekoek to Mattick, take quite a different position. They both rightly diagnose and critique the corruptibility of the union leaders and bureaucracy, but that is quite a bit different from disliking trade unions, which they didn't do.

Actually both Pannekoek and Mattick were completely against the trade unions.

[JDHURF]

Actually both Pannekoek and Mattick were completely against the trade unions.I have studied the work of both Pannekoek and Mattick and you are simply wrong. I would link to the relevant source material, but I am not allowed to do so yet. Pannekoek's Workers' Councils is virtually predicated upon the trade unions and the workers transcendence of the labor movement. Pannekoek posited that the revolution will begin with the labor organization of the trade unions, through strikes, proceeding through the strike the workers will then transcend the trade union bureaucracy by forming strike committees. Pannekoek explained the necessary role of trade unions in his article entitled "Trade Unionism" thusly:

"Trade unionism is the primary form of labour movement in fixed capitalism. The isolated worker is powerless against the capitalistic employer. To overcome this handicap, the workers organise into unions. The union binds the workers together into common action, with the strike as their weapon. Then the balance of power is relatively equal, or is sometimes even heaviest on the side of the workers, so that the isolated small employer is weak against the mighty union."

He then went on, in an article entitled "Workers Councils," I am quoting form the article, not the book, which I also own, to describe the way in which the trade union bureaucracy was to be transcended:

"In a big strike, all the workers cannot assemble in one meeting. They choose delegates to act as a committee. Such a committee is only the executive organ of the strikers; it is continually in touch with them and has to carry out the decisions of the strikers. Each delegate at every moment can be replaced by others; such a committee never becomes an independent power. In such a way, common action as one body can be secured, and yet the workers have all decisions in their own hands. Usually in strikes, the uppermost lead is taken out of the hands of these committees by the trade unions and their leaders."

Mattick takes a similar position positing the role of "the groups of council communists."

[Leo]

I have studied the work of both Pannekoek and MattickObviously not well enough.

The part you quoted from Pannekoek's article on trade unions is is describing what the trade unions were like in the past. Pannekoek describes them today as:


Trade unions, however, in war must stand upon the side of the capitalist. Its interests are bound up with national capitalism, the victory of which it must wish with all its heart. Hence it assists in arousing strong national feelings and national hatred. It helps the capitalist class to drive the workers into war and to beat down all opposition (...) Trade unionism abhors communism. Communism takes away the very basis of its existence. In communism, in the absence of capitalist employers, there is no room for the trade union and labour leaders (...) Trade unionism hates revolution. Revolution upsets all the ordinary relations between capitalists and workers. In its violent clashings, all those careful tariff regulations are swept away; in the strife of its gigantic forces the modest skill of the bargaining labour leaders loses its value. With all its power, trade unionism opposes the ideas of revolution and communism. This opposition is not without significance. Trade unionism is a power in itself. It has considerable funds at its disposal, as material element of power. It has its spiritual influence, upheld and propagated by its periodical papers as mental element of power. It is a power in the hands of leaders, who make use of it wherever the special interests of trade unions come into conflict with the revolutionary interests of the working class. Trade unionism, though built up by the workers and consisting of workers, has turned into a power over and above the workers, just as government is a power over and above the people.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1936/union.htm

This is not a new position for Dutch / German left communists, and the opposition to participation in trade unions had been their position for a long time, it was one of the main points they argued in the Communist International against the Bolsheviks who were for activity within the trade unions. Pannekoek wrote in World Revolution and Communist Tactics that:


[T]he trade unions have become enormous confederations which manifest the same developmental tendencies as the bourgeois state in an earlier period (...) [O]nce the proletariat ceases to be a member of capitalist society and, with the advent of revolution, becomes its destroyer, the trade union enters into conflict with the proletariat. It becomes legal, an open supporter of the state and recognised by the latter, it makes ‘expansion of the economy before the revolution’ its slogan, in other words, the maintenance of capitalism (...) Their counterrevolutionary potential cannot be destroyed or diminished by a change of personnel, by the substitution of radical or ‘revolutionary’ leaders for reactionary ones. It is the form of the organisation that renders the masses all but impotent and prevents them making the trade union an organ of their will. The revolution can only be successful by destroying this organisation.http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/tactics/index.htm

As for this comment from Workers Councils:


In a big strike, all the workers cannot assemble in one meeting. They choose delegates to act as a committee. Such a committee is only the executive organ of the strikers; it is continually in touch with them and has to carry out the decisions of the strikers. Each delegate at every moment can be replaced by others; such a committee never becomes an independent power. In such a way, common action as one body can be secured, and yet the workers have all decisions in their own hands. Usually in strikes, the uppermost lead is taken out of the hands of these committees by the trade unions and their leaders.Here what Pannekoek describes have got nothing to do with 'transforming' trade unions. It tells quite clearly how trade unions are against the independent class organizations that arise from workers struggle, such as workers committees. Pannekoek doesn't put workers committees as something that is within or that is for changing trade unions and quite clearly says that trade unions are very much against things like this.

Mattick too was against trade unions:


[T]he old method of struggle by means of elections and limited trade union activity has become quite futile

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1938/mass-vanguard.htm


What still exists there in the form of parties, trade and industrial unions, labour fronts and other organisations is so completely integrated within the existing societal form that it is unable to function other than as an instrument of that society.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1939/council-communism.htm


For a long time now trade unions and political labour parties have ceased to act in accordance with their original radical intentions. ‘Problems of the day’ transformed these movements and led to a situation in which there are no ‘real’ labour organisations despite the numerous pseudo-organisations still at large.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1977/spontaneity.htm


The workers' trade union representatives turned into managers of the labor market, in the same sense as that in which their political representatives attended to their farther-reaching social interests in the parliament of bourgeois democracy (...) Trade unions, once considered instruments for a developing class consciousness, turned out to be organizations concerned with no more than their special interests defined by the capitalist division of labor and its effects upon the labor market.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1983/reform/index.htm

[JDHURF]

You are mistaken. Were I able to link to outside sources I would do so, until I am able I will simply point out that Pannekoek viewed the trade union as the foundation, the starting point, just as I quoted him as saying, but further argued that the unions must be transcended through the unions themselves, through the strike specifically and the spontaneous creation of strike committees. The strike committee is clearly the embryonic form of the future socialist society for Pannekoek and the strike committees would be unable to exist, to spontaneously arise from the general strike of the unions, were unions not to exist.

Your citations from Mattick were selective and taken out of context. I have read every single one of the sources you just cited, you appear to have skimmed over them in order to gloss that which appears to support your convictions. Mattick constantly critiqued the trade unions for the same reasons, rightly, that Pannekoek did, but, like Pannekoek, he understood the foundational necessity of the trade unions, which were to be transcended through struggle, led, in his estimation, by the so-called "group of council communists."

[Leo]

You are mistaken.

I think it is a good time to admit that you are wrong when loads of direct quotes that go against your claim in put forward.


Were I able to link to outside sources I would do so

You don't have to, I know the articles you quoted from, in fact I quoted from some of them myself.


until I am able I will simply point out that Pannekoek viewed the trade union as the foundation

I think you should read the quotes posted above again. What you are saying is simply wrong, Pannekoek, Mattick and other German left communists opposition to even participating in trade-unions is a historical fact.


but further argued that the unions must be transcended through the unions themselves

No, he did not argue that they should be transcended, he argued that they should be destroyed, as it has been quoted above.


and the strike committees would be unable to exist, to spontaneously arise from the general strike of the unions, were unions not to exist.

The strike committees, and mass assemblies, and workers councils are created because workers themselves, and all workers from different sectors, different trade unions and non-unionized workers struggle together, not because unions call for them. The trade unions are against this unity, because it is part of a process which destroys them. The sole function of the existence of trade unions today in fact is to prevent this from happening as Pannekoek says.


Your citations from Mattick were selective and taken out of context. I have read every single one of the sources you just cited, you appear to have skimmed over them in order to gloss that which appears to support your convictions.

Actually, I don't need Mattick to support my convictions. However, the truth is that Mattick rejected the trade-unions, he thought they were completely integrated into the capitalist system and thus that they can't be changed from within. I think the quotes above demonstrate those rather clearly.

You can believe what you want, and read whatever you want to read in the writings of old council communists but this won't change the facts about council communism.

[JDHURF]

I think it is a good time to admit that you are wrong when loads of direct quotes that go against your claim in put forward.
No, your citations were selective – you outright dismissed my citations – and were taken out of context. More below.

The part you quoted from Pannekoek's article on trade unions is is describing what the trade unions were like in the past. Pannekoek describes them today as:
Trade unionism, though built up by the workers and consisting of workers, has turned into a power over and above the workers, just as government is a power over and above the people.

Which is just what I said previously when I pointed out that Pannekoek takes as the starting point trade unions and then analyzes the corruptibility of the union bureaucracy, critiques it, and then argues that the trade union must be transcended in just the way I described. The way in which Pannekoek argues for the transcendence of the unions requires the existence of unions in the first place to be transcended, that is elementary. If you think that Pannekoek completely rejected the existence of union, then how do you suppose he figured that strike committees would be established spontaneously by workers organizing themselves during the general strike, in order to bypass the labor bureaucracy? If there were no union, if there were not labor bureaucracy for the union members and workers to transcend, then Pannekoek’s conception of the necessity of forming strike committees, in his view the embryonic form of the future socialist society, exists within a vacuum and is rendered meaningless.

Here is more from Pannekoek:

Certainly, trade union action is class struggle. There is a class antagonism in capitalism -- capitalists and workers have opposing interests. Not only on the question of conservation of capitalism, but also within capitalism itself, with regard to the division of the total product. The capitalists attempt to increase their profits, the surplus value, as much as possible, by cutting down wages and increasing the hours or the intensity of labour. On the other hand, the workers attempt to increase their wages and to shorten their hours of work.

Trade unionism was the first training school in proletarian virtue, in solidarity as the spirit of organised fighting. It embodied the first form of proletarian organised power. In the early English and American trade unions this virtue often petrified and degenerated into a narrow craft-corporation, a true capitalistic state of mind. It was different, however, where the workers had to fight for their very existence, where the utmost efforts of their unions could hardly uphold their standard of living, where the full force of an energetic, fighting, and expanding capitalism attacked them. There they had to learn the wisdom that only the revolution could definitely save them.


So there comes a disparity between the working class and trade unionism. The working class has to look beyond capitalism. Trade unionism lives entirely within capitalism and cannot look beyond it. Trade unionism can only represent a part, a necessary but narrow part, in the class struggle. And it develops aspects which bring it into conflict with the greater aims of the working class.

Clearly what I have said regarding Pannekoek’s understanding of trade unionism as being foundational yet limited and in need of transcendence is entirely correct. Pannekoek then describes the ways in which union leaders cease being proleterian, cease representing the workers, and the way in which this obstacle is to be overcome, just as I described.

In fact, Pannekoek goes on to write very highly of the IWW, the American Industrial Workers of the World union, the “one big union,” which had and continues to have as its aim the overthrow of the capitalist system. As he explains: “Industrial unionism alone as a method of fighting the capitalist class is not sufficient to overthrow capitalist society and to conquer the world for the working class. It fights the capitalists as employers on the economic field of production, but it has not the means to overthrow their political stronghold, the state power. Nevertheless, the I.W.W. so far has been the most revolutionary organisation in America. More than any other it contributed to rouse class consciousness and insight, solidarity and unity in the working class, to turn its eyes toward communism, and to prepare its fighting power.”

[Devrim]

JDHURF is right on Pannekoek opinion of the IWW. The same opinion was also held by Mattick, who later became a member when he lived in the US.

However, I think that he is wrong when he writes about relationship of the trade unions and the mass strike. I don't understand why he seems to think that the strike committee is not needed in a non-union workplace.

Devrim

mass strikes have taken place in places with trade unions 'free', or 'state controlled', and without.

[Leo]

you outright dismissed my citations

No I responded to them actually. About one I said that you completely misunderstood it and about the other I said that it referred to the trade-unions of the past.


Which is just what I said previously when I pointed out that Pannekoek takes as the starting point trade unions and then analyzes the corruptibility of the union bureaucracy, critiques it

I'm sorry, but that quote quite clearly creates the trade-unions, not just the bureaucracy.


If you think that Pannekoek completely rejected the existence of union

He didn't say "No! Trade-unions don't exist! It's just people's imagination! I don't believe that they exist!" or something like that. He said that trade-unions were a part of capital which were fundamentally against workers interests, revolution, communism etc. and this is why he thought they should be destroyed.


Clearly what I have said regarding Pannekoek’s understanding of trade unionism as being foundational yet limited and in need of transcendence is entirely correct. Pannekoek then describes the ways in which union leaders cease being proleterian, cease representing the workers, and the way in which this obstacle is to be overcome, just as I described.

He is destroying the historical process, how trade unions changed and became a part of capital.

Of course he says that struggles lead by trade-unions are class struggles too.


In fact, Pannekoek goes on to write very highly of the IWW

Exactly, so does Mattick. They are for revolutionary-industrial unions, 'red' unions so to speak, not trade-unions (wrongly of course in my opinion). They expect nothing from the existing trade-unions, this is exactly why they are into the IWW.

[JDHURF]

JDHURF is right on Pannekoek opinion of the IWW. The same opinion was also held by Mattick, who later became a member when he lived in the US.

However, I think that he is wrong when he writes about relationship of the trade unions and the mass strike. I don't understand why he seems to think that the strike committee is not needed in a non-union workplace.

Devrim

mass strikes have taken place in places with trade unions 'free', or 'state controlled', and without.Well, personally, I do believe that the strike committees are necessary and should be argued for in a non-unionized work place. I was only describing the content of Pannekoek's theory, best expressed in his book entitled Workers' Councils, which I was again perusing earlier tonight, and he argued that the strike committees were historically compelled into existence by the corrupt union bureaucracy and that this was the way in which the strike committees were most likely to spontaneously arise; I must say, his overall description is to me compelling. I no doubt wish to see strike committees, workers' councils, service collectives and community cooperatives all arise spontaneously, with our without unions, but I also understand that historically whenever there are strong unions - unlike here in the United States where they have been all but destroyed, with unprecedented and unrestrained hostility since Reagan - there is a strong social commitment to concepts of democracy, freedom, human rights and so forth, and, as Chomsky points out, there is a culture that goes along with this, a culture of solidarity, empathy, mutual aid and so forth. It would be my opinion that a strong union movement, in the great tradition of the IWW of the US or the CNT-FAI of Spain, for example - I sure hope no one argues that the Spanish unions during the revolution were anything but of the highest revolutionary order, the greatest strategic and practical aspect of the revolution, the backbone of the revolution as it were - is a necessary preliminary at the very least, a fact upon which Pannekoek would no doubt agree with.

[JDHURF]

Leo:

Trade unions serve as the preliminary foundation, in my view and in Pannekoek's conception, they must necessarily be transcended no doubt. My quotations from Pannekoek are clear on this issue. As Pannkoek himself said:

"Trade unionism can only represent a part, a necessary but narrow part, in the class struggle. And it develops aspects which bring it into conflict with the greater aims of the working class."

I of course agree with both Pannekoek and Mattick on the question of the trade unions being in essence an appendage to capitalist society, in need of transcendence, through strike committees, the group of council communists and revolutionary syndicalists and so forth; I was, after all, comparing the council communism of Pannekoek to the anarcho-syndicalism of Rocker.

[JDHURF]

It was and remains my intention to discuss the convergence of left-Marxism and social anarchism, specifically, council communism and anarcho-syndicalism. I would now like to further the discussion, setting aside for now the interesting debate about trade unions, and move on to the question of parties and state power.

I began the thread comparing Pannekoek’s council communism with Rocker’s anarcho-syndicalism, in this line shall I further illustrate the convergence between the two tendencies upon the question of parliamentary parties and state power.

Pannekoek explains that “today belief in the party constitutes the most powerful check on the working class' capacity for action. That is why we are not trying to create a new party. This is so, not because our numbers are small -- a party of any kind begins with a few people -- but because, in our day, a party cannot be other than an organization aimed at directing and dominating the proletariat. To this type of organization we oppose the principle that the working class can effectively come into its own and prevail only by taking its destiny into its own hands.”[1]

Rocker concurs writing that “[p]articipation in the politics of the bourgeois states has not brought the labour movement a hairs' breadth closer to Socialism, but, thanks to this method, Socialism has almost been completely crushed and condemned to insignificance. The ancient proverb: "Who eats of the pope, dies of him," has held true in this content also; who eats of the state is ruined by it. Participation in parliamentary politics has affected the Socialist labour movement like an insidious poison. It destroyed the belief in the necessity of constructive Socialist activity and, worst of all, the impulse to self-help, by inoculating people with the ruinous delusion that salvation always comes from above.”[2]

The left-Marxist Paul Mattick explains further that “the parties of the workers, like those of the capitalists became limited corporations, the elemental needs of the class were subordinated to political expediency. Revolutionary objectives were displaced by horse-trading and manipulations for political positions. The party became all-important, its immediate objectives superseded those of the class. Where revolutionary situations set into motion the class, whose tendency is to fight for the realization of the revolutionary objective, the parties of the workers ‘represented’ the working class and were themselves ‘represented’ by parliamentarians whose very position in parliament constituted resignation to their status as bargainers within a capitalist order whose supremacy was no longer challenged.”[3]

Mattick explains that instead of a vanguard party leading the workers, the workers will themselves spontaneously create the necessary organizations required in order to give birth to the embryonic social structure of the future socialist society: “The Groups of Council Communists recognise also that no real social change is possible under present conditions unless the anti-capitalistic forces grow stronger than the pro-capitalist forces, and that it is impossible to organise anti-capitalistic forces of such a strength within capitalistic relations. From the analysis of present-day society and from a study of previous class struggles it concludes that spontaneous actions of dissatisfied masses will, in the process of their rebellion, create their own organisations, and that these organisations, arising out of the social conditions, alone can end the present social arrangement.”[4]


I do, however, agree with Mattick when he explains the role of the Groups of Council Communists:


The Groups do not claim to be acting for the workers, but consider themselves as those members of the working class who have, for one reason or another, recognised evolutionary trends towards capitalism’s downfall, and who attempt to co-ordinate the present activities of the workers to that end. They know that they are no more than propaganda groups, able only to suggest necessary courses of action, but unable to perform them in the ‘interest of the class’. This the class has to do itself. The present functions of the Groups, though related to the perspectives of the future, attempt to base themselves entirely on the present needs of the workers. On all occasions, they try to foster self-initiative and self-action of the workers. The Groups participate wherever possible in any action of the working population, not proposing a separate programme, but adopting the programme of those workers and endeavouring to increase the direct participation of those workers, in all decisions. They demonstrate in word and deed that the labour movement must foster its own interests exclusively; that society as a whole cannot truly exist until classes are abolished; that the workers, considering nothing but their specific, most immediate interests, must and do attack all the other classes and interests of the exploitative society; that they can do no wrong as long as they do what helps them economically and socially; that this is possible only as long as they do this themselves; that they must begin to solve their affairs today and so prepare themselves to solve the even more urgent problems of the morrow.[ 5] Arguably one of the best distillations of the argument against state power was formulated by Rocker in the following passage:


As long as within society a possessing and a non-possessing group of human beings face one another in enmity, the state will be indispensable to the possessing minority for the protection of its privileges. when this condition of social injustice vanishes to give place to a higher order of things, which shall recognise no special rights and shall have as its basic assumption the community of social interests, government over men must yield the field to the to the administration of economic and social affairs, or to speak with Saint-Simon: “The time will come when the art of governing man will disappear. A new art will take its place, the art of administering things.”
And his disposes of the theory maintained by Marx and his followers that the state, in the form of a proletarian dictatorship, is a necessary transitional stage to a classless society, in which the state after the elimination of all class conflicts and then of classes themselves, will dissolve itself and vanish from the canvas. This concept, which completely mistakes the real nature of the state and the significance in history of the factor of political power, is only the logical outcome of so-called economic materialism, which sees in all the phenomena of history merely the inevitable effects of the methods of production of the time. Under the influence of this theory people came to regard the different forms of the state and all other social institutions as a "juridical and political superstructure" on the "economic edifice" of society, and thought that they had found in that theory the key to every historical process. In reality every section of history affords us thousands of examples of the way in which the economic development of a country has been set back for centuries and forced into prescribed forms by particular struggles for political power.[6]

[1] http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1936/party-working-class.htm


[2] http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/rocker/sp001495/rocker_as4.html

[2] http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/rocker/sp001495/rocker_as1.html

[3] http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1938/mass-vanguard.htm

[4] http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1939/council-communism.htm

[5] ibid

[6] http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/rocker/sp001495/rocker_as1.html

[Xiao Banfa]

Sorry to divert from the subject at hand, which I agree with.

Serious class struggle anarchism and left communism are in convergence on many points. One being their idealistic conception of revolution. Another being their dislike of handling power.

I just got to say, this is one of the most devastating quotes I have ever heard; "In the name of a greater civilization, we curse those who for the sake of their ambitious dreams, brought about the massacre of so many young lives. No matter how brutal the crime, you will always get glorification of its heroism and tradition from the eunuchs of bourgeois culture." - Amadeo Bordiga.

[Xiao Banfa]

Obviously that is directed squarely at the socialists who attempt to play the geopolitical game.

I proudly count my comrades and myself amongst this current.

[Devrim]

Well, personally, I do believe that the strike committees are necessary and should be argued for in a non-unionized work place. I was only describing the content of Pannekoek's theory, best expressed in his book entitled Workers' Councils, which I was again perusing earlier tonight, and he argued that the strike committees were historically compelled into existence by the corrupt union bureaucracy and that this was the way in which the strike committees were most likely to spontaneously arise;

But to put it in its context, he was writing in a place, and time when most major workplaces were unionised. It is natural that he put his emphasis on this.


I no doubt wish to see strike committees, workers' councils, service collectives and community cooperatives all arise spontaneously, with our without unions, but I also understand that historically whenever there are strong unions - unlike here in the United States where they have been all but destroyed, with unprecedented and unrestrained hostility since Reagan - there is a strong social commitment to concepts of democracy, freedom, human rights and so forth, and, as Chomsky points out, there is a culture that goes along with this, a culture of solidarity, empathy, mutual aid and so forth.

Actually, workers councils have arose in places like there weren't strong unions, Russia in 1905 would be the prime example, but a more recent one would be in Iran in 1979.


I sure hope no one argues that the Spanish unions during the revolution were anything but of the highest revolutionary order, the greatest strategic and practical aspect of the revolution, the backbone of the revolution as it were - is a necessary preliminary at the very least, a fact upon which Pannekoek would no doubt agree with.

I couldn't find anything from Pannekoek himself on this, but many in the political current he came from condemned the CNT, and its anti-working class activities during the Spanish events.

Devrim

[JDHURF]

I couldn't find anything from Pannekoek himself on this, but many in the political current he came from condemned the CNT, and its anti-working class activities during the Spanish events.

DevrimI for the most part agreed with your other comments, but I would really like to see some sort of evidence for the claim about the anti-working class activities of the CNT during the Spanish revolution, because that claim is contrary to everything I have ever seen or read about the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUig0lFHDDw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbIpgGKtj5Y


Rudolf Rocker writes:


But in Spain, where Anarcho-Syndicalism had maintained its hold upon organised labour from the days of the First International, and by untiring libertarian propaganda and sharp fighting had trained it to resistance, it was the powerful C.N.T. which by the boldness of its action frustrated the criminal plans of Franco and his numerous helpers at home and abroad, and by their heroic example spurred the Spanish workers and peasants to the battle against Fascism--a fact which Franco himself has been compelled to acknowledge. Without the heroic resistance of the Anarcho-Syndicalist labour unions the Fascist reactions would in a few weeks have dominated the whole country.

When one compares the technique of the federalist organisation of the C.N.T. with the centralistic machine which the German workers had built for themselves, one is surprised by the simplicity of the former. In the smaller syndicates every task for the organisation was performed voluntarily. In the larger alliances, where naturally established official representatives were necessary, these were elected for one year only and received the same pay as the workers in their trade. Even the General Secretary of the C.N.T. was no exception to this rule. this is an old tradition which has been kept up in Spain since the days of the International. This simple form of organisation not only sufficed the Spanish workers for turning the C.N.T. into a fighting unit of the first rank, it also safeguarded them against any bureaucratic regime in their own ranks and helped them to display that irresistible spirit of solidarity and tenaciousness which is so characteristic of this organisation, and which one encounters in no other country.




This same event reveals that the Anarcho-Syndicalist workers of Spain not only know how to fight, but that they are filled with that great constructive spirit derived from their many years of Socialist education. It is the great merit of Libertarian Socialism in Spain, which now finds expression in the C.N.T. and F.A.I., that since the days of the First International it has trained the workers in that spirit which treasures freedom above all else and regards the intellectual independence of its adherents as the basis of its existence. The libertarian labour movement in Spain has never lost itself in the labyrinth of an economic metaphysics which crippled its intellectual buoyancy by fatalistic conceptions, as was the case in Germany; nor has it unprofitably wasted its energy in the barren routine tasks of bourgeois parliaments. Socialism was for it a concern of the people, an organic growth proceeding from the activity of the masses themselves and having its basis in their economic organisations.


Therefore the C.N.T. is not simply an alliance of industrial workers like the trade unions in every other country. It embraces within its ranks also the syndicates of the peasant and field-workers as well as those of the brain workers and the intellectuals. If the Spanish peasants are now fighting shoulder to shoulder with city workers against Fascism, it is the result of the great work of Socialist education which has been performed by the C.N.T. and its forerunners. Socialists of all schools, genuine liberals and bourgeois anti-fascists who have had an opportunity to observe on the spot have thus far passed only one judgement on the creative capacity of the C.N.T. and have accorded to its constructive labours the highest admiration. Not one of them could help extolling the natural intelligence, the thoughtfulness and prudence, and above all the unexampled tolerance with which the workers and peasants of the C.N.T. have gone about their difficult task. 1 (http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/rocker/sp001495/rocker_as4.html#note1) Workers, peasants, technicians and men of science had come together for co-operative work, and in three months gave an entirely new character to the whole economic life of Catalonia.


In Catalonia today three-fourths of the land is collectivised and co-operatively cultivated by the workers' syndicates. In this each community presents a type by itself and adjusts its internal affairs in its own way, but settles its economic questions through the agency of its Federation. Thus there is preserved the possibility of free enterprise, inciting new ideas and mutual stimulation. One-fourth of the country is in the hands of small peasant proprietors, to whom has been left the free choice between joining the collectives or continuing their family husbandry. In many instances their small holdings have even been increased in proportion to the size of their families. In Aragon an overwhelming majority of the peasants declared for collective cultivation. There are in that province over four hundred collective farms, of which about ten are under the control of the Socialist U.G.T., while all the rest are conducted by syndicates of the C.N.T. Agriculture has made such advances there that in the course of a year forty per cent of the formerly untilled land has been brought under cultivation. In the Levante, in Andalusia and Castile, also, collective agriculture under the management of the syndicates is making constantly greater advances. In numerous smaller communities a Socialist form of life has already become naturalised, the inhabitants no longer carrying on exchange by means of money, but satisfying their needs out of the product of their collective industry and conscientiously devoting the surplus to their comrades fighting at the front.


In most of the rural collectives individual compensation for work performed has been retained, and the further upbuilding of the new system postponed until the termination of the war, which at present claims the entire strength of the people. In these the amount of the wages is determined by the size of the families. The economic reports in the daily bulletins of the C.N.T. are extremely interesting, with their accounts of the building up of the collectives and their technical development through the introduction of machines and chemical fertilisers, which had been almost unknown before. The agricultural collectives in Castile alone have during the past year spent more than two million pasetas for this purpose. The great task of collectivising the land was made much easier after the rural federations of the U.G.T. joined the general movement. In many communities all affairs are arranged by delegates of the C.N.T. and the U.G.T., bringing about a rapprochement of the two organisations which culminated in an alliance of the workers in the two organisations.


But the workers' syndicates have made their most astounding achievements in the field in industry, since they took into their hands the administration of industrial life as a whole. In Catalonia in the course of a year the railroads were fitted out with a complete modern equipment, and in punctuality the service reached a point that had been hitherto unknown. The same advances were achieved in the entire transport system, in the textile industry, in machine construction, in building, and in the small industries. But in the war industries the syndicates have performed a genuine miracle. By the so-called neutrality pact the Spanish Government was prevented from importing from abroad any considerable amount of war materials. But Catalonia before the Fascist revolt not a single plant for the manufacture of army equipment. The first concern, therefore, was to remake whole industries to meet the war demands. A hard task for the syndicates, which already had in their hands full setting up of a new social order. But they perfumed it with an energy and a technical efficiency that can be explained only by the workers and their boundless readiness to make sacrifices for their cause. Men toiled in the factories twelve and fourteen hours a day to bring the great work to completion. Today Catalonia possesses 283 huge plants which are operating day and night in the production of war materials, so that the fronts may be kept supplied. At present Catalonia is providing for the greater part of all war demands. Professor Andres Oltmares declared in the course of an article that in this field the workers' syndicates of Catalonia "had accomplished in seven weeks as much as France did in fourteen months after the outbreak of the World War."


But that is not all by a great deal. The unhappy war brought into Catalonia an overwhelming flood of fugitives from all the war-swept districts in Spain; their number has today grown to a million. Over fifty per cent of the sick and wounded in the hospitals of Catalonia are not Catalonians. One understands, therefore, with what a task the workers' syndicates were confronted in the meeting of all these demands. Of the re-organisation of the whole educational system by the teachers' groups in the C.N.T., the associations for the protection of works of art, and a hundred other matters we cannot even make mention here.


During this same time the C.N.T. was maintaining 120,000 of its militia, who were fighting on all fronts. No other organisation has thus far made such sacrifices of life and limb as the C.N.T.-F.A.I. In its heroic stand against Fascism it has lost a lot of its most distinguished fighters, among them Francisco Asco and Buenaventura Durutti, whose epic greatness made him the hero of the Spanish people.


Under these circumstances it is, perhaps, understandable that the syndicates have not thus far been able to bring to completion their great task of social reconstruction, and for the time being were unable to give their full attention to the organisation of consumption. The war, the possession by the Fascist armies of important sources of raw materials, the German and Italian invasion, the hostile attitude of foreign capital, the onslaughts of the counter-revolution in the country itself, which, significantly, was befriended this time by Russia and the Communist Party of Spain--all this and many other things have compelled the syndicates to postpone many great and important tasks until the war is brought to a victorious conclusion. But by taking the land and the industrial plants under their own management they have taken the first and most important step on the road to Socialism. Above all, they have proved that the workers, even without the capitalist, are able to carry on production and to do it better than a lot of profit-hungry entrepreneurs. Whatever the outcome of the bloody war in Spain may be, to have given this great demonstration remains the indisputable service of the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalists, whose heroic example has opened for the Socialist movement new outlooks for the future.




Here are just a few opinions of foreign journalists who have no personal connection with the Anarchist movement. Thus, Andrea Oltmares, professor in the University of Geneva, in the course of an address of some length, said:

"In the midst of the civil war the Anarchists have proved themselves to be political organisers of the first rank. They kindled in everyone the required sense of responsibility, and knew how, by eloquent appeals, to keep alive the spirit of sacrifice for the general welfare of the people.
"As a Social Democrat I speak here with inner joy and sincere admiration of my experiences in Catalonia. The anti-capitalist transformation took place here without their having to resort to a dictatorship. The members of the syndicates are their own masters and carry on the production and the distribution of the products of labour under their own management, with the advice of technical experts in whom they have confidence. The enthusiasm of the workers is so great that they scorn any personal advantage and are concerned only for the welfare of all." The well-known anti-Fascist, Carlo Roselli, who before Mussolini's accession to power was Professor of Economics in the University of Genoa, put his judgement into the following words:

"In three months Catalonia has been able to set up a new social order on the ruins of an ancient system. This is chiefly due to the Anarchists, who have revealed a quite remarkable sense of proportion, realistic understanding, and organising ability...all the revolutionary forces of Catalonia have united in a program of Syndicalist-Socialist character: socialisation of large industry; recognition of the small proprietor, workers' control...Anarcho-Syndicalism, hitherto so despised, has revealed itself as a great constructive force...I am not an Anarchist, but I regard it as my duty to express here my opinion of the Anarchists of Catalonia, who have all too often been represented to the world as a destructive, if not criminal, element. I was with them at the front, in the trenches, and I have learnt to admire them. The Catalonian Anarchists belong to the advance guard of the coming revolution. A new world was born with them, and it is a joy to serve that world." And Fenner Brockway, Secretary of the I.L.P. in England who travelled to Spain after the May events in Catalonia (1937), expressed his impressions in the following words:

"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."

http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/rocker/sp001495/rocker_as4.html


The C.N.T. was founded in 1910, and within a few years counted as members over a million workers and peasants. The organisation was new only in name, not in objectives or methods. The history of the Spanish labour movement is shot through with long periods of reaction, in which the movement has been able to carry on only an underground existence. But after every such period it has organised anew. The name changes, but the goal remains the same. The labour movement in Spain goes back to 1840, when the weaver, Juan Munts, in Catalonia, brought into being in Barcelona the first trade union of textile workers. The government of that day sent General Zapatero to Catalonia to put down the movement. The consequence was the great general strike of 1855, which led to an open revolt in which the workers inscribed on their banners the slogan: Associación ó Muerte! (The right to organise or death!) The rebellion was bloodily suppressed, but the government granted the workers the right of organisation.

The first movement of the Spanish workers was strongly influenced by the ideas of Pi y Margall, leader of the Spanish Federalists and disciple of Proudhon. Pi y Margall was one of the outstanding theorists of his time and had a powerful influence on the development of libertarian ideas in Spain. His political ideas had much in common with those of Richard Price, Joseph Priestly, Thomas Paine, Jefferson, and other representatives of the Anglo-American liberalism of the first period. He wanted to limit the power of the state to a minimum and gradually replace it by a Socialist economic order. In 1868, after the abdication of King Amadeo I, Bakunin addressed his celebrated manifest to the Spanish workers, and sent a special delegation to Spain to win the workers to the First International. Tens of thousands of workers joined the great workers' alliance and adopted the Anarcho-Syndicalist ideas of Bakunin, to which they have remained loyal to this day. As a matter of fact, the Spanish Federation was the strongest organisation in the International. After the overthrow of the first Spanish republic the International was suppressed in Spain, but it continued to exist as an underground movement, issued its periodicals, and bade defiance to every tyranny. And when, finally, after seven years of unheard-of persecution, the exceptional law against the workers was repealed, there immediately sprang to life the Federaction de Trabajadores de la Región Española, at whose second congress in Sevilla (1882) there were already represented 218 local federations with 70,000 members.


No other workers' organisation in the world has had to endure such frightful persecution as the Anarchist labour movement in Spain. Hundreds of its adherents were executed or horrible tortured by inhuman inquisitors in the prisons of Jerez de la Forntera, Montjuich, Sevilla, Alcalá del Valle, and so on. The bloody persecutions of the so-called Mano Negra (Black Hand), which actually never existed, was a pure invention of the government to justify the suppression of the organisations of the field workers in Andalusia; the gruesome tragedy of Montjuich, which in its day roused a storm of protest from the entire world; the acts of terrorism of the of the Camisas Blancas (White Shirts), a gangster organisation which had been brought into existence by the police and the employers to clear away the leaders of the movement by assassination, and to which even the General Secretary of the C.N.T., Salvador Segui, fell victim -- these are just a few chapters in the long, torture-filled story of the Spanish labour movement. Fransisco Ferrer, founder of the Modern School in Barcelona and publisher of the paper La Huelga General (The General Strike) was one of its martyrs. But no reaction was ever able to crush the resistance of its adherents. That movement has produced hundreds of the most marvellous characters, whose purity of heart and inflexible idealism had to be acknowledged even by their grimmest opponents. The Spanish Anarchist labour movement had no place for political careerists. What it had to offer was constant danger, imprisonment, and often death. Only when one has become acquainted with the frightful story of the martyrs of this movement does one understand why it has assumed at certain periods such a violent character in defence of its human rights against the onslaughts of black reactionaries.


The present C.N.T.-F.A.I. embodies the old traditions of the movement. In contrast with the Anarchists of many other countries, their comrades in Spain from the beginning based their activities on the economic fighting organisations of the workers. The C.N.T. today embraces a membership of two and a half million workers and peasants. It controls thirty-six daily papers, among them Solidaredad Obrera in Barcelona, with a circulation of 240,000, the largest of any paper in Spain, and Castilla Libre, which is the most read paper in Madrid. Besides these the movements put out a lot of weekly publications and possesses six of the best reviews in the country. During the last year, in particular, it has published a large number of excellent books and pamphlets and has contributed more to the education of the masses than has any other movement. The C.N.T.-F.A.I. is, today, the backbone of the heroic struggle against Fascism in Spain and the soul of the social reorganisation of the country.



http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/rocker/sp001495/rocker_as6.html

[Devrim]

Well they joined the bourgeois Government, and called on workers to lay down their arms and stop their strikes when the Stalinists were attacking them in the street for a start.

Let's let the Spanish anarchists speak though:


The CNT was utterly devoid of revolutionary theory. We did not have a concrete programme. We had no idea where we were going. We had lyricism aplenty; but when all is said and done, we did not know what to do with our masses of workers or how to give substance to the popular effusion which erupted inside our organisations. By not knowing what to do, we handed the revolution on a platter to the bourgeoisie and the marxists who support the farce of yesteryear.
...
The CNT ought to have leapt into the driver's seat in the country, delivering a severe coup de grace to all that is outmoded and archaic. In this way we would have won the war and saved the revolution. But it did the opposite. It collaborated with the bourgeoisie in the affairs of state, precisely when the State was crumbling away on all sides. It bolstered up Companys and company. It breathed a lungful of oxygen into an anaemic, terror-stricken bourgeoisie.

http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/arch/tafr/

The ICC's series on the history of the CNT is also interesting:
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/128/cnt-rev-syndicalism
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/129/CNT-1914-1919
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/130/CNT-1919-1923
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/131/CNT-1921-31

Devrim

[JDHURF]

Well they joined the bourgeois Government, and called on workers to lay down their arms and stop their strikes when the Stalinists were attacking them in the street for a start.

Let's let the Spanish anarchists speak though:


http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/arch/tafr/

The ICC's series on the history of the CNT is also interesting:
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/128/cnt-rev-syndicalism
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/129/CNT-1914-1919
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/130/CNT-1919-1923
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/131/CNT-1921-31

Devrim
The CNT maintained 120,000 of its militia fighting on all fronts, just as Rudolf Rocker described, so I don't know where the claim that the CNT called on its workers to lay down their arms as the Stalinists attacked them comes from. I read the first link from internatinoalism.org and found several errors and inconsistencies. I recommend that you read the Rocker quotes and links I provided and, for balance, Murray Bookchin's account To Remember Spain: http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/bookchin/sp001642/toc.html

as maintaining 120,000 of its militia, who were fighting on all fronts.

[JDHURF]

Here is an account of the CNT, from a participant who did not expect too much assistance, as he writes, from the CNT, considering he was assisting POUM, a Marxist organization:

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/cnt_fenner.html

Rudolf Rocker's work The Tragedy of Spain, like his Anarcho-Syndicalism, is in this instance of the utmost value. I will quote from it two of the more relevant excerpts:


THE CONSTRUCTIVE SOCIALIST WORK
OF THE C.N.T. AND THE F.A.I. Socialists of all schools, sincere liberals and bourgeois anti-Fascists who had an opportunity to observe on the spot the splendid work of social upbuilding of the Spanish workers, have thus far passed only one judgment on the creative ability of the C.N.T. and have rendered to its labors the tribute of their sincerest admiration. None of them could help extolling the native intelligence, the forethought and prudence and, above all, the unexampled tolerance with which the workers of the C.N.T. had performed their difficult task. So said the Swiss Socialist, Andres Oltmares, professor in the University of Geneva, in a rather long essay from which we take the following:


"In the midst of the civil war the Anarchists have proved themselves to be political organizers of the first rank. They kindled in everyone the required sense of responsibility, and knew how by eloquent appeals to keep alive the spirit of sacrifice for the general welfare of the people. "As a Social Democrat I speak here with inner joy and sincere admirations of my experiences in Catalonia. The anti-capitalist transformation took place here without their having to resort to a dictatorship. The members of the syndicates are their own masters, and carry on production and the distribution of the products of labor under their own management with the advice of technical experts in whom they have confidence. The enthusiasm of the workers is so great that they scorn any personal advantage and are concerned only for the welfare of all."
And, speaking of the adaptation of industries to the war needs, Professor Oltmares declared that in the matter of organization the Catalonian workers' syndicates "in seven weeks accomplished fully as much as France did in fourteen months after the outbreak of the World War." He might have added: and as Russia had not been able to accomplish after two years of Bolshevist dictatorship. Quite a number of similar reports by impartial and honest observers found their way into the press of every country except Russia and the Fascist states. However one may look upon the C.N.T. from the point of view of world philosophy, he cannot refuse recognition to the unlimited willingness to sacrifice and the constructive spirit of its members. But not only Socialists and honest correspondents of bourgeois papers were obliged to take cognizance of these facts; even Mr. Antonov-Ovs&eactue;enko, the Russian consul at Barcelona, was unable to avoid expressing the same view. Thus in an interview he granted to a correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian," published on December 22, 1936, we find:


"The Consul, of course, denied the well known fact of the interference of Soviet Government in the internal politics of Catalonia. But at the same time he expressed greatest admiration for the Catalan workers, especially for the anarcho-syndicalists. "The sobriety of the Catalan workers surprised and gratified the Soviet Consul no less than their extreme common sense and adaptation to realities. Recalling that it had been necessary in Petrograd in 1917 to flood the cellars of the palaces to prevent drunkenness, Ovséenko related his astonishment at visiting a champagne factory outside Barcelona, which had not only been raided but kept in the most perfect state by the workers' committees.
"'The anarchist movement,' the Soviet representative stated, 'was obviously rooted in the Catalan working class, but its best representatives were astonishingly able to realize the needs of the present situation... Their strength is unparalleled in the anarchist movement in any other country. Despite certain fanaticisms the typical worker in the C.N.T. was chiefly interested in working under decent conditions, and for this reason would fight to death against Fascism.'
"The Consul has no doubt that the Catalan workers are capable of reconstructing the wrecked industries, their unaided work in the harbor and factories showing that they are capable of running industry themselves. He was impressed with the fact that the political crisis in Catalonia had been resolved in two days with the minimum of disturbance."
Since then seven months have gone by. At that time one still had to proceed with caution so as not to make the Spanish workers and peasants shy off, for, though they knew very well how to fight and to build, they had no experience in the deceptive arts of crafty diplomacy. Their whole lives had moved along roads where one's word was one's word and man's trust in man had not been flung to the dogs, as in Bolshevist Russia. That the Russian consul's asseverations were never meant seriously, recent events in Spain have clearly shown. They were, from the first, designed to throw dust in the eyes of the working people of Spain and the world and to trick them with statements which the consul did not himself believe. If one can bring any reproach against the leading persons in the C.N.T.-F.A.I. it is that they accorded these false "brothers" a greater confidence than they deserved, and that under the pressure of desperate circumstances they let themselves be drawn into making concessions which could only prove disastrous to them later. Actuated by a thoroughly noble sentiment, they undervalued too greatly the subterranean machinations of a secret enemy who threatens today to prove more perilous to them than open Fascism. The fact the Russian press, for reasons that are easily understood, never uttered one least little word about the efforts of the Spanish workers and peasants at social reconstruction, which the Russian consul at Barcelona "admired" so much, in itself speaks volumes.
In Spain, however, the attacks of the Stalinists were directed not merely against these efforts, but against all the accomplishments which had been born of the events of July, 1936. It was they who zealously urged upon the government the suppression of the workers' patrols by the police; it was they who played themselves up as defenders of the middle class, in order to turn these against the workers; it was they who suggested to the government at Valencia a censorship of the press under Russian supervision; it was they who at the time of the heaviest battles against Franco and his German and Italian allies provoked one governmental crisis after another in Valencia and Barcelona in order to bring their secret plans in the interest of England and France to fulfillment; and it was they who sought earnestly to concentrate all power in the hands of the central government in order to institute through this agency that "neutral dictatorship" for the "tranquilizing of the country" which had been so warmly recommended by the leader of the English Tories, Winston Churchill.
The Communist press of the whole world and its allies among the socalled neutral powers are trying by an infamous propaganda of falsehoods to deceive their readers as to the real state of affairs, telling them that the attitude of the Spanish Stalinists is dictated purely by the need to avoid driving the middle class and the small land-owners into Franco's arms, as the "ridiculous socializing campaign" of the C.N.T. is doing.
But in this respect also matters are really quite different. The C.N.T. from the beginning regarded the petty bourgeois and small farmer as natural allies in the struggle against Fascism. Its press has all along pointed out that during this transition period it recognizes any economic form which does not have as its objective the exploitation of man by man. For this reason it has put no obstacles in the way of family management in the country or of small enterprises in the city. To be sure the C.N.T. attacked with all its energy speculators and cut-throats with union cards in their pockets who wanted to profit from the confusion; and that is altogether understandable.
In its work of socialization the C.N.T. has imposed upon itself the greatest moderation and has gone about its task with a tact and prudence that only pure malevolence would dare to deny. Wherever small farmers have preferred individual operation to agrarian collectives, they have been left their free choice. Their small pieces of land have not been touched; they have even been enlarged in proportion to the size of the families. It is a fact that after the great days of the July revolution many hundreds of small employers and small farmers voluntarily put their plants and their land at the disposal of the workers' syndicates and hailed the social revolution with genuine enthusiasm. In Aragon, for example, an overwhelming majority of the small farmers declared for collective agriculture. There exist there at present about four hundred collective enterprises, of which only ten have joined the U.G.T., while all the others belong to the C.N.T. syndicates.
In reality a very friendly relation has existed for a long time between the C.N.T. and the anti-Fascist bourgeoisie. This did not change until the disruptive work of the Stalinists set in, and the Communists began to play up the petty bourgeoisie as their trump cards against the workers. Only then did it become possible for "Treball," the Communist Party sheet in Barcelona, to proclaim with proletarian pride that "the totality of the petty bourgeoisie" was organized in the Catalonian U.G.T. This was written by the same men who earlier had used tones of profound contempt to designate their Socialist opponents of both the right and left as "petty bourgeois." With bitter irony, but most convincingly, the daily paper "CNT" in Madrid characterized this Jesuitical duplicity of the Communists:


"The Communist Party wishes to make us believe that the revolution is to be furthered by favoring small businessmen, safeguarding private ownership, standing up for the interests of small industrialists, excluding labor organizations from a share in the government, sabotaging the village collectives of the peasants, showing oneself amenable to the wishes of foreign capital, and, above all, by denying that the present situation in Spain is favorable to a social revolution. That same Communist Party is doing this, which only a few years ago, when it was setting itself for the first time to disseminate its ideas in our country, had assigned to the social revolution the first place on its order of the day. "In other words: For the Communist Party the revolution will be made with the help of the counter-revolution, and the counter-revolution with the help of the revolution. And if anyone says that this is nonsense, he is reminded that we are not here setting forth our own views, but the latest theory of unadulterated Marxism-Leninism."

MOSCOW'S CAMPAIGN OF LIES AGAINST THE C.N.T. Norman Thomas, the well known leader of the Socialist Party of the United States, who recently returned from an investigating trip in Spain, relates in "The Nation" that there is a joke current there to the effect that when anyone is too conservative to join the Left Republicans he joins the Communists. In reality, however, this is not a joke, but a stubborn fact that there is no way of getting around. Concerning the role of the Communist Party in Spain there is only one opinion among men of every political shade. Thus, the Liberal "Manchester Guardian" states:


"The Communists in Spain are the Right wing supporters of the government. They are in a sense conservatives, seeing that their declared aim is to re-establish republican democracy... "The anarchists, who command the majority of labor in Catalonia, are the only party which puts revolution first. They, alone of all the Spanish political movements, remain true revolutionaries, with the exception of the rather vveak P.O.U.M."
Even the conservative "New York Times" was obliged to confirm this:

"The Communists are today perhaps the most moderate faction in Spain, and in comparison with the Anarchists, who stand to their left, they are flatly conservative. Notwithstanding this, the prospects for a Communist regime after the Russian pattern are very small, as the Anarchists are too strong." And Dr. Trabal, one of the best-known Catalonian Nationalist leaders, who a short time ago joined the Communist P.S.U.C., declared with cynical frankness:

"Yes, I am now among the Socialists. But let no one tell me that I have changed my position. I stand just where I always stood. It is the Socialists and the Communists who have changed their position. With their help I can go on working for my ideals." While the Spanish Stalinists were aligning themselves with the Spanish bourgeoisie against the mass movement of the workers and peasants, there began in the Russian press a savage campaign against the so-called "Trotzkyists" in Spain and the C.N.T., which for cowardly deceit and meanness of sentiment excelled anything that the most perverted fancy could invent. It is extremely sign)ficant that just at the time when the Russian consul at Barcelona was assuring the "Manchester Guardian," in the interview referred to, that "for these reasons Russia could not but look sympathetically upon the Catalan wQrl;ers' movement. It certainly has no intention of preventing their working out of their own salvation in the manner most suited to their national characteristics" -- just then "Pravda" thought it fitting to report:

"So far as Catalonia is concerned, the cleaning up of Trotzkyist and Anarcho-Syndicalist elements there has already begun, and it will be carried out there with the same energy as in the U.S.S.R." (Pravda, December 17, 1936) And these cowardly and conscienceless attacks stiffened just in the measure that the Stalinists, with the aid of the official representatives of Russia, succeeded in gaining ground, until at last the Spanish correspondent of "Pravda" published in that paper a sensational article, which we here reproduce verbatim:

"The central organ of the Anarchists in Barcelona, 'Solidaridad Obrera,' carried in its March 16th issue, an insulting attack on the Soviet press. It is significant that the writer directs his attack more particularly at those reports in the Soviet press which related to the counter-revolutionary activities of the Trotzkyist P.O.U.M., and makes the assertion that 'these injurious tactics are meant merely to rouse dissension in the ranks of the anti-Fascist front in Spain: "This obscene defense of the Trotzkyist traitors proceeds from those shady elements which have sneaked into the ranks of the Anarcho-Syndicalist organization. They are the former colleagues of Primo de Rivera in the 'Fascist Phalanx' and the Trotzkyists. It is no secret that these plague spots flourish best today in 'Solidaridad Obrera'; for it is known that the actual literary director of this sheet is Canovas Cervantes, former editor of the Fascist paper, 'La Tierra.'
"These agents of Franco have today intrenched themselves behind the Anarchist organization to destroy the Spanish Popular Front; but they are not going to succeed. The Anarcho-Syndicalist masses every day understand better the necessity for an iron discipline and a strong people's government. That is the reason why these enemies of the Spanish people have crept into the ranks of the Anarchists and are combating the Popular Front with redoubled frenzy.
"It is no accident that just at the moment when the Italians are setting themselves for an offensive on the Guadalajara front, the tricky Trotzkyists are preparing an armed revolt against the Valencia government. It is also necessary to note that the sheet, 'Nosotros', in Valencia is pleading every day for the release of all those who are in jail for taking part in an armed uprising, among whom are to be found a number of outspoken Fascists. And this demand is always accompanied by threats against the government.
"The anti-Soviet story in 'Solidaridad Obrera' is proof that behind the central organ of the Anarchists stand Trotzkyists and the agents of the German secret police. This fact has already alarmed those leaders of the Catalonian Anarchists who seriously intend to combat international Fascism." (Pravda, March 22, 1937)
With such contemptible charges, every word of which is a deliberate lie thought out with cynical calculation, dishonorable calumniators, who in the service of their political patrons have made Iying a trade, dare to belittle a movement which by its heroic resistance has saved the country from the attacks of the Fascist conspirators; a movement whose adherents are fighting and dying with une::ampled bravery on every front; a movement which produced a Durruti, whose name will live in Spanish history when only a monstrous blot of shame will stand for the breed that now slanders his comrades. They will never forget in Spain that it was chiefly the militia of the C.N.T. which, under men like Mera, Palacios, and Benito y Vallanueva, hurled themselves at the enemy before Madrid and blocked his way with their bodies. "And without Durruti and his heroic troops Madrid would today long have been in the hands of the Fascists," as "Frente Libertario," organ of the confederated militia could assert with full justice. No other movement has made such enormous sacrifices during the frightful war against Fascism as the C.N.T.-F.A.I. None has lost so many of its best in this desperate struggle. Everyone knows this in Spain. Their bitterest opponents cannot refuse them that recognition. The five hundred thousand who made up the last escort of their comrade Buenaventura Durruti, fallen by a cowardly assassination, gave powerful expression to this universal conviction.

[RebelDog]

The CNT maintained 120,000 of its militia fighting on all fronts, just as Rudolf Rocker described, so I don't know where the claim that the CNT called on its workers to lay down their arms as the Stalinists attacked them comes from. I read the first link from internatinoalism.org and found several errors and inconsistencies. I recommend that you read the Rocker quotes and links I provided and, for balance, Murray Bookchin's account To Remember Spain: http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/bookchin/sp001642/toc.html

as maintaining 120,000 of its militia, who were fighting on all fronts.

The CNT leadership did tell the workers to dismantle the barricades, stop the fighting and return to work. I am pretty sure Devrim is referring to the notorious events of May'37 when this hapened. Government CNT collaborationists Montseny and Garcia Oliver went on the radio to urge the CNTists to stop the fighting and the grass roots obeyed. Again they had control and gave it up.

[Devrim]

The CNT maintained 120,000 of its militia fighting on all fronts, just as Rudolf Rocker described, so I don't know where the claim that the CNT called on its workers to lay down their arms as the Stalinists attacked them comes from.

In the workers uprising of May 3rd-8th 1937, the CNT called on their members to lay down their arms and return to work. This was done publicly in the pages of Solidaridad Obrera, and on the radio.


The CNT maintained 120,000 of its militia fighting on all fronts,

As Spanish anarchists themselves pointed out at the time:


In July a Committee of Antifascist Militias was set up. It was not a class organ. Bourgeois and counter-revolutionary factions had their representatives on it. It looked as if this Committee had been set up as a counter-balance to the Generalitat. But it was all sham.

Devrim

[Devrim]

I came across an article by Mattick denouncing the CNT:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1937/spain.htm


On May 7, 1937, the CNT-FAI of Barcelona broadcast the following order: “The barricades must be torn down! The hours of crisis have passed. Calm must be established. But rumors are circulating throughout the city, contradicting the reports of a return to normality such as we are now issuing. The barricades are a contributing factor to this confusion. We don’t need the barricades now that fighting has stopped, The barricades serve no purpose now, and their continued existence might give the impression that we wish to return to the previous state of affairs – and that is not true, Comrades, let us cooperate for the reestablishment of a completely normal civil life. Everything that hinders such a return must disappear.” And then began the normal life, that is, the terror of the Moscow-Fascists. Murder and imprisonment of revolutionary workers. The disarming of the revolutionary forces, the silencing of their papers, their radio stations, the elimination of all positions they had previously attained. Counter-Revolution triumphed in Catalonia, where, as we were so often assured by the anarchist leaders and these of the POUM they were already on the March towards socialism. The counter-revolutionary forces of the People’s Front were welcomed by the anarchist leaders. The victims were supposed to hail their butchers. “When an attempt was made to find a solution and reestablish order in Barcelona,” we read in a CNT bulletin, “the CNT and FAI were the first to offer their collaboration; they were the first to put forward the demand to stop the shooting and try to pacify Barcelona. When the Central government took over public order, the CNT was among the first to put at the disposal of the representative of public order all the forces under its control. When the Central government decided to send armed force to Barcelona, in order to control the political forces which would not obey the public authorities, the CNT was once more the one to order all the districts to facilitate the passage of these forces, that they might reach Barcelona and establish order”.
Yes, the CNT has done the utmost to help to carry the Valencia Counter-revolution into Barcelona. The imprisoned workers may thank their anarchist leaders for their confinement, which ends before the firing sounds of the Moscow-Fascists. The dead workers are removed together with their barricades; they were silenced so that their leaders might continue to talk...

Devrim

[Raúl Duke]

Well, I suppose that the problems of the Civil War would, I think, in Devrim's opinion, stem from the fact that a labor union was organizing the whole thing?

In reality, anarcho-syndicalism probably doesn't have much similarity due to their focus on labor unions but anarcho-communists and left-communists can probably come to a better agreement in many points than the syndicalists. Actually I think the AF (in UK-Ireland) have taken a similar position to labor unions like the Left-Communists (although not sure...).

[Devrim]

Well, I suppose that the problems of the Civil War would, I think, in Devrim's opinion, stem from the fact that a labor union was organizing the whole thing?

I don't think the problem was that 'a labor union was organizing the whole thing'. I think the problem was that unions had become integrated into the state, and ended up disarming the working class on behalf of the Stalinists, and sending them to the front to protect the bourgeoisie.

Devrim

[Raúl Duke]

True; but what would be the source for this problem? Why were the Spanish anarchists timid (why is it that in these revolutions there's always signs of timidity. The should have robbed the bank in the Paris Commune and they should have crushed the state instead of joining it in Spain...) and why did they do these grave mistakes? (I do not deny the mistakes they made; after all the Friends of Durruti must have been complaining over something serious.)

What would you have proposed instead in the beginning for the Catalan workers, Devrim? (I want to hear your idea on what should have been done.)

Also, more importantly; why did this thread turned into a historical analysis of the Spanish Civil War?