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The Spanish Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

J. Romero Maura
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SPAIN IS THE WESTERN COUNTRY WHICH, SECOND ONLY TO PORTUGAL, holds the record for the most unmitigated, the most lasting and – by its own standards – the most successful domination of the extreme Right. None should be surprised, then, that after thirty-one years of determined authoritarian rule, Spanish anarchism should not be a significant force at present. Like all revolutionaries everywhere and always, Spanish anarchists in the past managed to gather some strength only when there was a degree of freedom allowing them to organize politically, unheard of in General Franco's regime, or else when dictators were afflicted by impotence in certain geographical areas, or by glaring imbecility, none of which has been the case in post-civil war Spain.

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Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1970 , pp. 456 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1970

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References

1 For an attempt at establishing what elements of Spanish working-class tradition have survived in the latter part of the Franco regime, see Jon Amsden, Industrial Relations in Contemporary Spain: A Study of the Bargaining Process and Worker Participation under National Syndicalism (Ph.D. Thesis, London, 1969, Unpubl.).

2 Most of the Trotskyite literature deals with this problem. The main arguments of the Trotskyite approach in: La Révolution Espagnole, 1936–9, supplément a Etudes Marxistes, N° 7–8, Paris, n.d., 1969.

3 This subject is central to two of the best works on Spanish anarchism in the 1930s: John Brademas, Revolution and Social Revolution. A Contribution to the History of the Anarcho-syndicalist Movement in Spain, 1930–1937 (D.phil thesis, Oxford, 1953, Unpubl.) and César M. Lorenzo, Les Anarchistes Espagnols et le Pouvoir, 1868–1969, Paris, 1969.

4 Collectivization has given rise to interminable arguments but little work on sources. The most comprehensive bibliography (until 1967) in Frank Mintz, ‘La Collectivisation en Espagne, 1936–1939; Esquisse Bibliographique’, in: Archives Internationales de Sociologie de la Cooperation et du Developpement, N°. 22, Suppl. àCommunaute, VII–XII, 1967. The best summary, in F. Mintz, L’Auto-gestion dans L’Espagne Révolutionnaire, Paris, 1970. See also: Hugh Thomas, ‘Anarchist Agrarian Collectives in the Spanish Civil War’, in Martin Gilbert, ed., A Century of Conflict, 1850–1950: Essays for A. J. P. Taylor, London, 1967, pp. 245–63.

5 Stanley Payne’s The Spanish Revolution, London, 1970, provides the most complete analysis from this point of view.

6 This view crops up from time to time in well-known books by Brenan, Borkenau and some others. Talk about the ‘age-long ideas of death as liberation’ in Spanish culture is still very fashionable (see e.g. Hills, G., Spain, London, 1970, p. 372); the argument can be found fully developed already in Chateaubriand and is no more adequately supported now than it was then.Google Scholar

7 This hypothesis is summarized in most of its aspects in Pierre Vilar, Histoire d’Espagne, Paris, 1958, pp. 80–1; Vicens Vives, J., Cataluna el el siglo XIX Madrid, 1961, pp. 254–60.Google Scholar

8 Willard, Claude, in Les Guesdistes, Paris, 1965, part III, has found no clear correlations in this sphere, in his study of French socialism prior to 1905. On the other hand the areas and industries where revolutionary syndicalism was most widespread in Russia (see Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, Princeton, 1967, chapters 3 & 8) would also seem to disprove the common interpretation that socialism alone was equipped to penetrate the great modern industries.Google Scholar

9 The evidence is very fragmentary. But there are too many examples to the contrary. The union of typesetters was for a long time the socialist stronghold in Madrid and the anarchist one in Barcelona. At the turn of the century, broadly speaking, the miners of Asturias were socialist and the surface workers anarchist (see Ruiz, David, El Movimiento Obrero en Asturias, Oviedo, 1968, p. 100); it seems, however, that at the start of the Civil War, a large proportion of Asturian miners was anarchist (see C. M. Lorenzo, Les Anarchistes, p. 175, note 26); the Catalan miners who rebelled in January 1932, were anarchists. In the early 1930s the dockers of Barcelona and Gijón were anarchists, while those of Seville were communists. Apparently the two main nuclei of anarchism in Madrid were the construction workers … and the employees of the Telephone Company. In Barcelona and the rest of Catalonia, they do not seem to have controlled the large textile mills and metallurgic plants any less than they did the small factories.Google Scholar

10 For the progress made by socialism in Andalusia during the years of the dictatorship, see Maurín, Joaquín, Los Hombres de la Dictadura, Madrid, 1930, pp. 197–9.Google Scholar On the FNTT, see Jackson, G., The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931–1939, Princeton, 1965, pp. 29,Google Scholar 79, 112. But the indispensable work on this is Malefakis, Edward, Land Tenure, Agrarian Reform and Peasant Revolution in Twentieth Century Spain (Ph.D. Thesis, Columbia University, 1966).Google Scholar

11 For a summary of this, see Federico Urales, La Evolution de la Filosofia en España, edited and with an introduction by R. Pérez de la Dehesa, Barcelona, 1968.

12 The nationalist Left, from its formation as an independent political party in 1905, never stopped trying to carve out for itself a working-class base. Some of the foremost figures of this Left, like Corominas, Layret and Companys, had close personal relations with certain anarchists. But they failed. The best outline of the politics of the Republican Left is in Amadeu Hurtado, Quaranta Anys d’Avocat, 3 vols., Mexico, 1956, Barcelona, 1964, 1967.

13 This indifference of nationalists to national politics is one of the main myths of the Left about modern Spain. It is all the more curious since most relatively elaborate analyses reject it. The argument, complete, is in Ramos Oliveira, A., Politics, Economics and Men of Modern Spain—1808–1946, London, 1946, pp. 380–93.Google Scholar

14 It is ever more difficult to find in the books of professional historians oversimplified versions of the restoration as a period of unmitigated caciquismo. But the official Spanish historiography continues to stick to this version. Outside Spain, one example of this version is Connelly Ullman, J., The Tragic Week: a Study of Anticlercalism in Spain, 1875–1912, Harvard, 1968.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 See Payne, Spanish Revolution, p. 21.

16 The main secondary sources for the period 1868–1874 are: Martí, Casimiro, Orígents del Anarquismo en Barcelona, Barcelona, 1959 Google Scholar; Termes Ardévol, José, El Movimiento Obrero en España: La Primera International 1864–1881, Barcelona, 1965;Google Scholar Lida, Clara E., Origenes del Anarquismo español: 1868–1884 (Ph.D. Thesis, Princeton, 1968 Google Scholar, unpublished). For the period 1874–1888, Max Nettlau’s, La Premiere Internationale en Espagne 1868–1888, is essential, edited by Renée Lamberêt, Dordrecht, 1969. For the Black Hand, see Lida, C. E., ‘Agrarian Anarchism in Andalusia’ in International Review of Social History, XIV, 1969, part 3, pp. 315–52.Google Scholar

17 For the terrorism of the 1890s, the best sources are still R. Mella and J. Prat, La Barbarie Gubernamental en España, Brooklyn - in fact Barcelona - 1897, and the roman à clef of Sempau, R., Los victimarios, Barcelona, 1901. For the evolution of the syndical and labour movement in those years, there are hardly any secondary sources. For the terrorism of the first decade of the century, a synthesis in my article in Past and Present, December, 1968.Google Scholar

18 Since there ate no monographic studies on the penetration of revolutionary syndicalist ideas in the Catalan anarchist movement of that time, the best basic sources are the collections of La Huelga General, in Barcelona, El Trabajo, of Sabadell and Solidaridad Obrera also of Barcelona.

19 See the Freedom pamphlet: The International Anarchist Congress held at Plancius Hall, Amsterdam, on August 26–31, 1907, London, 1907.

20 The structure given to the CNT in 1918–19 had its origins in the Spanish Bakuninist Federation and in the French CGT. But it was a peculiarity of the CNT to refuse to organize Federations of Industries. The Madrid Congress of 1931 decided that these Federations should be formed, but the extremists prevented the ruling from being put into practice. A further point which needs stressing is that - in spite of the lack of adequate statistics on Spain - the experience of the French CGT in its first period seems to prove that the scarcity of strike funds did not have an adverse effect on the effectiveness of the strikes (see comparative figures in Carl Landauer, European Socialism: A History of Ideas and Movements, Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1959, I, p. 347).

21 Little is known about the CNT until 1917. For the period prior to 1923, the best sources are: M. Buenacasa, El Movimiento Obrero Español: 1886–1926: Figuras Ejemplares, Paris, 1966; Albert Balcells, El Sindicalisme a Barcelona, 1916–1923, Barcelona, 1965. For the period of the dictatorship and the republic, apart from the aforementioned works by Brademas and Lorenzo, C. M., see the books by Jose Peirats, La CNT en la Revolución Española, Toulouse, 1953, vol. I, and Los Anarquistas en la Crisis Española, Buenos Aires, 1964.Google Scholar

22 For the Bourses du Travail and the underlying conception, see Fernand Pelloutier, Hisioires des Bourses du Travail, Introduction by G. Sorel, Paris, 1902; also, Paul Delesalle, Les Bowses du Travail et la CGT, Paris, n.d. For the Camere del lavoro and the specifically Italian aspects, an essential, work is G. Procacci, ‘La Classe operaia agli inizi del secolo XX’, in Studi Storici, a III. n°. I, 1962. See also, I. Barbadoro, ‘Problemi e Caratteristiche Storiche del Movimento Sindacale Italiano’, in Rivista Storica del Socialismo, ci, 19, 1963.

23 The warnings by the theoreticians of revolutionary syndicalism on the dangers of party bureaucracy were not taken seriously by the men of the Second International. However, it should be remembered that Robert Michels, author of the great classic on this subject, was a revolutionary syndicalist of sorts from the very beginning. Another interesting book in this context is Arturo Labriola, Il Socialismo Contemporaneo, Rocca San Giovanni, 1914, where he speaks of the dangers, for the socialist revolution, of the formation of a ‘new class’ (p. 281).

24 Another important consequence of the policy of non-remuneration of union officials was that all the positions were always occupied by members of the unions and that for them to remain at their post, not only was their capacity taken into account, but also they had to be re-elected as representatives of their local union.

25 The only instance of a continued collaboration between middle-class individuals and the CNT involved the left-wing lawyers. But this was a very limited phenomenon. Besides, when it organized, the CNT, unlike Italian syndicalism, had no middle-class intellectuals in its leadership. Unlike the French CGT it did not even have bourgeois intellectuals who, without being members themselves, could give theoretical coherence to syndicalist practice. This phenomenon, which has its parallel in the late date at which the Spanish Socialist Party started to recruit intellectuals, has not yet been explained satisfactorily.

26 This outline of the dynamics of subcultures follows the model described by Cohen, A. K. in his classic book: Delinquent Boys. - The Culture of the Gang, Glencoe, 1955.Google Scholar A synthesis of later literature on the subject is in Ferracuti, M. E. and Wolfgang, F., The Subculture of Violence - Towards an Integrated Theory in Crimonology, London, 1967.Google Scholar

27 Not only the better known leaders of the FAI needed to be capable of facing up personally to violent situations. See for example the case of Emilio Boal (Buenacasa, Movimiento, pp. 251–7) and that of Mariano Vazquez ( Murioz Diez, M., Marianet: Semblanza de un Hombre, Mexico, 1960). The best study of the process by which the gunmen imposed their will on the moderates in the first years after the first world war is Angel Pestaña, Lo que Aprendi en la Vida, Madrid, n.d. 1933. For the failure of Treintismo and the use of the Comite’s-pro-Presos by the FAI, see Brademas, A Contribution…, chapters 3 and 4.Google Scholar

28 Salvador Segui was without a doubt the ideal leader of the CNT in the period of its initial growth, when it had to transform the essentially materialist aspirations of new members into a revolutionary spirit. Inevitably, he was pushed aside later. There is no detailed biography of Segui; the best source is Viadiu, J. et al., Salvador Segui, su vida, su obra, Paris, 1960.Google Scholar

29 For an excellent synthesis of aims and methods of recruitment of English and German unions, see Heidenheimer, Arnold J, ‘Trade Unions, Benefit Systems and Party Mobilization Styles’, Comparative Politics, I,3 04 1969.Google Scholar

30 Julliard, Jacques in Cle’menceau Briseur de Grèves, Paris, 1965, pp. 123–40,Google Scholar has shown how the CGT lost its impetus and its revolutionary leadership already with the fall of Griffuelhes and his replacement by Niel in 1909. But the syndicalist conception of the revolution was still strong in the French working-class movement until the events of 1920 and the consequent disillusionment; the standard work on this is Kriegel, Annie, Aux Origines du Communisme Francais 1914–1920, Paris, 1964, 2 Google Scholar vols. The Italian case is more complex and has been studied less; the defeat of the syndicalists in the Congress of Rome of 1906 represents for the PSI something like the fall of Griffuelhes for the CGT. Although the first great defeat of revolutionary syndicalism as a strategy was the Settimana Rossa of 1914 (see L. Lotti, La Settimana Kossa, Florence, 1965), and this was at the origin of the sharp turn in the strategy of many revolutionary syndicalists (see Renzo de Felice, Mussolini, I! Revolutionaro, Turin, 1969, chapters 8–10; Orietta Lupo, ‘I Sindicalisti Rivoluzionari nel 1914, in Rivista Storica delSocialismo, X, 32, 1967, pp. 43–82), the events of 1920 in Turin seem to prove that the ideals of revolutionary syndicalism had not then died out totally (although Paolo Spriano’s monograph, L’Occupazions delle Fabricbe, Turin, 1964, would appear to disprove such a view). The ambiguity of the conception of violence in Georges Sorel no doubt reflects the fausse conscience of the revolutionary syndicalists with regard to the problem of revolution. Although the writings of Griffuelhes express no uneasiness at all in that respect, some of the closer studies of the way in which revolution would take place do reflect unease. Thus, both Emile Pouget and Pataud (Comment Nous Ferons la Revolution, Paris, s.d. - 1907) and Arturo Labriola (Riforme e Rivoluione Sociale. - La Crisi Pratica del Parti to Socialista, Milan, 1904) were ultimately confident that the discoveries of science would miraculously prevent the revolution from being a blood-bath. The warnings of Jaures are reprinted in the book edited by Hubert Lagerdelle, La Grève Générale et le Socialisme: Enquéte Internationale, Paris, 1905, which is the best compendium of the positions in Europe on the subject of the general strike. Much before Briand in France and Canalejas in Spain proved how right Jaurès had been, Giolitti had shown in 1904 how easily a government could deal with a revolutionary general strike (see Procacci, G., ‘Lo sciopero generale del 1904’, in Rivista Storica del Socialismo, v. 17, 1962, pp. 401–38).Google Scholar

31 See Luxemburg, Rosa, Grève de Masse, parti et syndicats, 1906, in R. L. Oeuvres, Paris, 1969, I, pp. 91–174.Google Scholar

32 Synthesis of the criticisms of the communists formulated in the 1930s by the anarchists, in the pamphlet: La CNT y los Comunistas Espanoles. - Interventión de V. Orobón Fernández, n.p. n.d. For the anarcho-bolsheviks, see Lorenzo, C. M., Les Anarchistes, pp. 58–62;Google Scholar Ricardo Sanz, El Sindicalismo y la Politica. - Los ‘Solidarios’ y ‘Nosotros’, Toulouse, n.d.

33 Toryho, Jacinto, La Traición del Senor Azaña, New York, 1939, p. 25.Google Scholar