[Van-Parecon] Event TODAY: 70th anniversary of Spanish Civil War

[vancouverparecon at resist.ca]

Hello,

Today (Wednesday) at 7:00pm we'll be celebrating the 70th anniversary
of the Spanish Civil War through movie, talk and discussions at Spartacus
Books, 319 West Hastings. We'll be showing two movies, "Land and Freedom"
by Ken Loach and "Nosotros somos asi" ("This is how we are") a musical
starring children playing on several revolutionary themes. Produced by the
CNT during the 1937 civil war. This showing will be the first time this
film will have ever been seen in English. These films will be followed by
talk based on an essay (see below) written and delivered by VanParecon
collective member Dave Markland.

For more information visit our website at
http://vanparecon.resist.ca
Or send us an email at
vancouverparecon at resist.ca

The Spanish anarchists, through a participatory lens.

[This essay is the basis of a talk to be given at a Vancouver Parecon
Collective event marking the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Revolution on
July 19th, 2006 at 7pm at Spartacus Books in Vancouver.]

"The Spanish Revolution". Among today's anarchists and radical activists,
those three words alone have the power to conjure visions of triumph and
heroism. Maybe you picture a group of enthusiastic CNT militia members
crammed onto the back of a truck repainted black and red, fists raised in
solidarity with their well-wishers who line the streets of Barcelona; some
think of George Orwell, shot through the neck while fighting the fascists
on the Aragon front; others think of Ernest Hemingway, pissed drunk at a
cafe in Madrid, slurring through some rant about hunting or booze; or
maybe you emotionally sing the strains of the anarchist battle hymn 'Las
Barricadas'. (Embarrassingly, my version always ends up sounding like the
'Imperial March' from Star Wars.)

We all know the story (roughly, anyway): Franco, Morocco, July 19th, CNT
militias, the POUM (pronounced "poom"), Stalin, the UGT, the PSUC (aptly
pronounced "pee-suck"), Durruti, the International Brigades, and the
Falangists (usually pronounced "fascists"). Yet this list covers only the
military and political aspects of the struggle. Behind the lines, in
Republican-held zones, blossomed the social revolution: agrarian
collectives and syndicalised industry. This, too, is fairly well-known
amongst anarchists, as is the fate of these admirable accomplishments.
(Here, phrases like "Communist treachery" and "Stalinist
counter-revolutionaries" are useful.)

But what were these collectives and self-managed factories actually like?
How was work organised and carried out? How was consumption organised?
More to the point: What can the experiences of the Spanish comrades teach
us about goals, vision, tactics and strategies? That is, before we adopt
pages from the anarchist play book, we would do well to critically examine
the contexts and outcomes of those plays.

No doubt many readers are familiar with the question of anarchist
participation in the Republican government. Another well-worn argument
concerns military tactics and strategy, as well as wider concerns about
hierarchical discipline and militarization of the militias. These will be
set aside to pursue the narrower issue of the economic accomplishments of
the Revolution.

And we shall see, not surprisingly, that these revolutionaries deserve
credit and unbridled respect for the incredible advancements they made in
libertarian economic organisation. However, we shall also see that some of
their actions and institutions need to be rejected -- and in fact they
have been rejected by many anti-authoritarian activists who have come
since. Indeed, entire movements (like the women’s movement) have emerged
to address injustices of a type to which the Spanish Revolution was not
immune. The purpose of the present essay is to help illuminate those
troublesome features of the Spanish accomplishments. In so doing, I rely
on a set of insights and analyses which will be familiar to anyone
acquainted with participatory economics (Parecon)*, which I think can be
fairly described as a modern anarchist economic vision. To expropriate a
line from the bard: I have come to praise anarchism, not to bury it. Thus,
we shall begin with a short description of the revolutionary economy,
followed by a discussion of various lessons which can be drawn from the
Spanish experience.

Agrarian collectives:
The Workers' Committees which arose locally throughout Spain, and which
took up arms to defeat the right-wing revolt, soon found themselves the
only organised social actors in large parts of Republican Spain. Wealthy
landowners having fled or been killed, the Committees held general
assemblies in villages in order to redistribute land. At these meetings
the anarchists generally advocated for collectivisation and many of their
neighbours responded with enthusiasm. Those families who did not want to
join the collectives, called individualists, were each allotted
family-sized plots which they then worked without hired help.
(Collectivists generally respected these dissidents and hoped that the
positive example of the collective would win them over; often that was
indeed the case.) Meanwhile, collectivists pooled their personal
possessions -- such as money, work animals and tools  -- and set to work
on the liberated land in crews of five to ten workers. Work assignments
were decided by a council of elected delegates and work days were the same
duration for everyone (usually eight or nine hours).

Initially, these newly-formed collectives abolished money and in its place
consumption was reorganised according to the long-held vision of anarchist
communism. This can be described as "to each according to their need", or
perhaps more accurately "take what you feel you need". In any case, the
demands of the Civil War soon revealed this approach to be irresponsible.
Consequently, in an effort to provide more supplies for the militias (and
also to stop instances of cheating) a rationing system was typically
introduced. This centered around a uniform daily wage denominated in
pesetas (which was not redeemable for the official peseta of Republican
Spain). Adjustments were made according to a worker’s family size. For
example, an unmarried collectivist might get 10 pesetas a day; a married
couple 17 pesetas, plus 4 pesetas per child. Additional measures were
taken to ensure that those villagers who were unable to work received
credits also. All of these guaranteed wages were earmarked in advance for
several types of consumer product. Thus, every week families received a
week's worth of grocery credits, a week's worth of clothing credits, a
week's worth of credits for wine, etc. Credits could be saved from week to
week if necessary to purchase a valuable item, though they were not
transferable to other types of goods or to other people. In this way,
individual differences in consumption desires were accommodated, though
this was decidedly limited in scope as there were scarcely twenty
different items to be bought in most places, owing to a long-standing lack
of economic development.

Many villages had some level of light industry -- olive presses, flour
mills, bakeries, sandal factories, construction, and so on. These
operations were frequently integrated with the collective, and all the
workers therein receiving equal consumption rights. With the village
economy integrated in this way, both production and consumption were
socialised. Elected (and recallable) councils dealt with finding outlets
for the village's surplus goods as well as purchasing things the
collective required but which were not produced locally. In addition,
these councils took care of rationalising existing workplaces while also
establishing new industries if needed. Amazingly, all this was done while
organising supplies to be sent to the militias at the front.

So, we have seen that the anarchist collectives eventually rejected the
model of anarchist communism, expressed in the slogan "From each according
to their abilities, to each according to their needs". Each worker took on
an equal share of the work to be done, and there were, in effect,
punishments if one did not perform one's duties. These ranged from social
disapproval to expulsion. And, as we have also seen, consumption was more
or less equally allotted. While this system was austere (and the pressing
needs of the war certainly justified that), it wasn't unfair. Fairness was
ensured through the Workers' Councils, where collective members could
voice their differing needs and preferences or explain unique
circumstances which might justify adjustments to work load or consumption.

Syndicates:
Meanwhile, in the more industrialised areas of Republican Spain, like
Barcelona, revolutionaries faced a different set of circumstances.
Capitalist owners of industry were expropriated and Workers' Councils
established self-management in many anarchist-influenced workplaces.
However, it was immediately clear that use of the official Spanish
currency could not be abolished, as it was essential to the highly
commerce-oriented role of industry. The official currency was still in use
in large parts of Republican Spain, where the revolution hadn't taken hold
(the Basque region, for example). These areas, as well as foreign
countries, constituted the market for industrial production

Despite this obstacle which hampered the advancement of the economic
revolution, tremendous strides were made in the advancement of workers'
control of industry. Elected and recallable Workers' Councils took over
the functioning of vast swaths of industry. The full value of their labour
accrued to the workers along with decisions over investment, marketing and
planning. And, initial steps were taken toward integrating the rural
collectives with urban industries. This step was necessitated by the
Republican government's deliberate withholding of raw materials and
currency -- an attack which focused on those factories which did not
produce badly-needed weapons. Thus, in response, the desperate industrial
Workers' Councils intensified their efforts to barter their products for
those of the rural agricultural collectives, thus sidestepping the market.

Vision:
While the spirit of spontaneity was strong in the Spanish anarchist
movement, there was an underlying commitment to preparation and planning
which long preceded the Revolution's successes. The years before the
Revolution saw a virtual cottage industry of anarchist vision, whose
stand-out text was Diego Abad de Santillan's After the Revolution. Gaston
Leval comments: "The new form of organisation had already been clearly
thought out by our comrades when they were engaged in underground
propaganda during the Republic" (145).** And, if planning and pre-figuring
was normal, anarchists were not shy about modifying and changing their
goals as circumstances required. Leval, again: "If the pragmatic methods
to which they had to have recourse may appear to be insufficient, and
sometimes unsound ... the development tending to eliminate these
contradictions was taking place rapidly ... and progress was being rapidly
made towards unifying and decisive improvements." (198). Developments and
innovations were unfolding well into the period of collectivisation and
anarchists didn't hold back in sharing their insights and solutions: "In
July 1937, 1000 members of the Levante Collectives had been sent to
Castile to help and to advise their less experienced comrades. As a
result.... great strides were made in a minimum of time." (183). All this
points to the self-critical, pragmatic aspect of the movement, as well as
the importance placed on insights derived from anarchist vision: "The need
to control and to foresee events was understood from the first day" (193).

Solidarity:
Virtually all contemporary observers were struck by the ability of the
anarchists to harness and propel the tremendous outpouring of solidarity
and sacrifice exhibited by the workers. Throughout revolutionary Spain,
common people made great efforts with their bodies and minds, motivated by
nothing more than a desire to see the revolution carried through.
Certainly some of this solidarity stems precisely from the threat of a
totalitarian state should the war be lost. However, it is clear that the
accomplishments of the revolution spurred efforts of such great enthusiasm
that propaganda was often thought to be redundant.

Balancing:
In considering the divvying of work it is obvious that rural collectivists
made efforts to balance the onerousness of jobs, thus not overtaxing
people's enthusiasm. That is, solidarity was not over-exploited so as to
make the most enthusiastic people work the most distained jobs. Instead,
efforts were made to share the more difficult tasks. In Mas de las Matas,
peasant labour crews were organized into work crews which aimed to balance
time on easily worked land with time spent working in more difficult
conditions (138). Meanwhile, in syndicalised industry, there was further
concern for countering capitalist tendencies toward de-skilling workers;
thus Leval reports on plans among Barcelona's industrial workers to send
workers to technical schools "so that they do not continue to be, as has
been the case hitherto, simple mindless cogs in a machine" (262).

Democratic econ planning:
Once collectives had been established and federated with the goal of
integrating their economies, the possibilities for large-scale economic
planning arose. This was accomplished through workers' councils and
regional committees. Typically, elected (and recallable) administrative
commissionaires made decisions on production and consumption. These
decisions could be made on a local level if the affected population was
localised, or it could be at a higher-level council such as Valencia's
regional council deciding to build a new juice factory to meet demand
summed at a regional level (156). The extent and nature of this planning
procedure was well illustrated in Castellon de la Plana, a large town of
50,000: "Every month the technical and administrative council presented
the general assembly of the Syndicate with a report which was examined and
discussed if necessary, and finally approved or turned down by a majority.
Modifications were introduced when this majority thought it of use" (303).

Economic rationality:
Collectives faced pressures on all sides: many of the able-bodied were
with the militia, plus these localities were attempting to provision those
same fighters. All this created an urgent need to get the most production
out of the existing inputs of labour, physical plant and raw materials.
Consequently, great strides were made in rationalising and taking
advantage of economies of scale. Throughout the reports on the
agricultural collectives, redundant workplaces are eliminated. In one
locale, four bakeries operated where there had been six before the
revolution (94). In Aragon, the labour force was integrated above the
local level, so that neighboring collectives would borrow and lend members
as needs arose. Leval reveals the extent of this integration: When farming
villages were approached by representatives from revolutionary areas
outside Aragon, "the reply they got was, 'Comrade, what we have here does
not belong to us; you must get in touch with the secretariat of the
regional Federation in Madrid.' ... for it was understood that respecting
decisions taken ensured the success of the whole enterprise." (186)

We have thus far seen that the Spanish anarchists had vision. They had
dynamic goals, flexible strategy, and sought useful methods of analysis.
They also fostered tremendous enthusiasm and solidarity. And they wisely
re-organized their workforce and resources for maximum efficiency while
instituting some level of democratic economic planning which included
production, consumption and even, to some degree, investment planning.
But, from the writings available to us, it is clear that certain problems
arose alongside the new revolutionary institutions. Some of these were
noticed, and remarked upon, by the anarchists themselves. Others did not
overly trouble contemporary observers.

Tom Wetzel writes that "Anarchists are clearer about the structures of
control -- worker and community assemblies, and horizontal federations of
these -- than about the principles of allocation or economic planning,"
Indeed, Abad de Santillan's book mentioned above spells out an array of
structures for an anarchist economy -- workers' councils, federations,
etc. -- but is silent on processes.  This may strike modern anarchists as
odd, accustomed as we are to efforts toward consensus decision making,
gender balance and the like. Yet, observers of the Spanish collectives
give scant attention to procedural questions, leaving the impression that
issues of process were not a large part of the agenda of council meetings.
There is, for instance, no indication that any collective was concerned
about the possibility that women may not be properly heard at meetings,
though concern was certainly voiced about the need for the collectives’
assemblies to hear the views of (male) individualists who were not members
of the collective. (It would, of course, be wrong to take this lack of
evidence as proof that there was no concern for women's participation.
However, the lack of recorded discussion itself strongly indicates that
such issues were not given the same importance as they typically are given
today.)

Gender, kinship and morality:
Modern students of the Revolution are immediately struck with Spanish
anarchism's outdated response to the gender question. While the Revolution
certainly ignited feminist struggle (which was completely ignored by Leval
and other male observers), certain facts give an indication of how
significant the obstacles were for women. For instance, women's wages in
the revolutionary agrarian collectives were typically equal to half or
three quarters of the wages of their male comrades -- a fact that is
reported (repeatedly) without comment by Leval and other observers.
Neither is there any mention of kinship institutions coming under scrutiny
at collective meetings. In fact, the revolutionary economy of the villages
was predicated on traditional families, as consumption was organised along
the basic unit of the household. Unmarried women were for the most part
expected to remain living with their parents as adults, and the economy
reflected this and other traditional expectations. Souchy writes of the
village of Beceite: "The gong sounds ... to remind the women to prepare
the midday meal."

And the sexual revolution that often accompanies massive social upheaval
is nowhere evident, particularly in rural areas. Indeed, in the town of
Rubi, there was said to be an active effort to prevent sexual liberation
among young people (Leval, 299). This doesn't seem that surprising when
one learns that anarchists in many rural areas had been viewed as moral
leaders in their communities, since well before the Revolution. In
contrast to traditional economic and religious elites who led debased and
debauched lives, anarchists had often advocated, and practiced, abstention
around such sinful subjects as sex, booze and coffee. Indeed, Leval's
comment about the town of Andorra generalises: "work was the major
occupation...there was no place in the rules for the demand for personal
freedom or for the autonomy of the individual" (125). I shall leave it to
the reader to decide the proper attitude toward sexual liberation (not to
mention caffeine), but suffice it to say that anarchists (and others) have
long been at work attempting to overcome whatever short-comings the
Spanish comrades exhibited on this subject.

Market behavior:
The attitude of Spanish anarchists toward markets is perhaps best
described as ambiguous. On one level, it seems that Spanish anarchists had
a long-standing aversion to markets. Gerald Brenan notes this opposition
among pre-Revolutionary anarchists, citing their "condemnation of
co-operatives, friendly societies and strike funds ‘as tending to increase
egoism in the workers'” (Brenan, 178). Similarly, several months into the
Revolution, the workers of Valencia "realized that a partial
collectivization would degenerate over time into a kind of bourgeois
cooperativism" (Peirats, 125).

Yet, working against this was the fact that anarchists had a serious
commitment to both village autonomy and worker/peasant control of the full
value of the products of their labour. The result was that collectives
sent all of their surplus goods to the cantonal capital where elected
councils were responsible for bartering those goods with surplus goods
from other collectives. Leval relates: "The profits from the sale of
various commodities provided the municipal Council with the resources
needed for other communal tasks" (288). Peirats' observations are germane:
"Once the economic necessities of the collective itself were covered, the
surplus was sold or bartered on the external market, directly or by way of
confederal organizations" (Peirats, 141). "Barter was not rigorously
regulated. In some places items were valued in terms of July 19th prices:
in others, according to current prices in the free market. Among the
Aragonese collectives there was not much control over what was exchanged"
(Peirats, 143).

While it is evident that various councils did engage in planning, it is
clear that once products had left the locality, they were exchanged with
an eye toward maximising returns. While it is true that profits thus
derived were often sent to the front or shared with less profitable
collectives, this was not enough to overcome several negative effects of
markets. And these negative effects were by no means unrecognised by the
collectivists. Souchy reports on a dispute involving two collectives in
Aragon, where one collective refused to pay the pre-Revolutionary rate for
the electricity supplied by a neighboring collective. The
electricity-producing collective insisted on the old rate, which entailed
payment for workers' wages, plus profit on top of that. Unable to resolve
the issue otherwise, the matter was taken to court.

Spanish anarchists thus sought, but did not achieve, the elimination of
the market. This failure occurred partly because total collectivisation
was not possible, but also partly because the anarchists lacked the
theoretical tools to readily identify all the aspects of markets which
undermine efforts at self-management, equality and solidarity. Thus the
challenge for anarchists forming economic vision is to conceptualise the
economy so as to highlight what needs to be created or abolished. Of
course, Parecon is one answer to this challenge.

Red Bureacracy / Co-ordinator problems:
Attitudes toward gender issues aside, it is the Spanish revolutionaries'
response to bureaucratic tendencies which is most surprising. Compared to
today's anarchists, the Spanish anarchists had a considerable blind spot
in regard to hierarchies arising from concentration of work skills, the
role of experts, and the like. A few examples should illustrate:

Item: In Rubi: "The member with the highest professional experience was
nominated as the technical councillor, with the task of supervising and
guiding all the work on the various sites. And accountancy was put in the
hands of the specialist deemed the most able" (297).
Item: In Alicante's syndicalised construction industry, "it was from among
the employers that the site managers were selected". These former
employers "had a greater sense of duty than that of the average worker,
accustomed to being given orders and not to taking responsibilities".
Perhaps it's not surprising that in this syndicate "it was not possible to
put into operation at one stroke the absolute equality of wages"
(307-308).
Item: In the industrial center of Alcoy: "A comrade whose ability for this
kind of work was recognized was put at the head of the sales section. He
supervised work in his section..."  "The personnel of the whole industry
was divided into specialties: manual workers, designers and technicians"
(234-235).
Item: In Granollers: "The economic section of the commune set up a
'technical bureau' consisting of three experts, and which in agreement
with the syndical Economic Council, steered the work of the industrial
undertakings." This was the same town where technicians "considered
themselves a class apart", according to Leval (287).
Item: Two comrades (one CNT, one UGT) "were in charge of the general
secretariat" in Graus and were "also entrusted with propaganda" (97).

While there are some indications that for certain economic roles it was
felt unwise for just one person to fill them (that of an "eminent doctor"
for example [272]), the anarchists' response was typically to rotate the
role in question. Otherwise, filling it with a reliable anarchist was
evidently the back-up plan. (Thus, Souchy writes: "the Chief of Police was
the well-known anarchist Eroles".) Yet another solution (this one out of
the Parecon playbook) would be to work to eliminate all undesirable roles
by redrawing their constituent tasks and spreading those tasks into
balanced job complexes.

This blind spot concerning bureaucracy has its echoes down to the present
and is well illustrated by Sam Dolgoff in his memoirs. Dolgoff, the late
anarchist militant and veteran of the International Brigades, approvingly
cites Spanish militia leader Buenaventura Durruti's own investigations
into the alleged formation of a bureaucracy within the CNT's
administrative offices. Durruti's findings are reported by his biographer:

"...the national headquarters of the CNT were not centralized. All the
people working in the national headquarters and in the organization were
employed, not by the National Committee, but were elected by and
accountable to the plant assemblies. They were paid not by the National
Committee, but by enterprises in which they were employed...."

Dolgoff comments:

"Both Augustin Souchy, who administered the Foreign Information Bureau of
the CNT, and one of his coworkers, Abe Bluestein, of New York, told [m]e
that everyone working in the National Headquarters from responsible
officials to porters and maintenance workers were paid the same equal
wages. Durruti and others who investigated were convinced that there was
no bureaucracy in the CNT anywhere" (see Dolgoff).

At risk of belabouring a point, it is doubtful that many of today's
anarchists would view such traditional work roles ("responsible officials"
and "porters") as evidence of victory over bureaucratic tendencies. That
this attitude existed among the Spanish comrades is perhaps understandable
given that the Russian Revolution, which offers a litany of lessons about
bureaucracy, was at the time very poorly understood in Spain, to say
nothing of elsewhere. (However, Dolgoff, it should be noted, was writing
in the 1980's.)

In closing, it bears repeating that the Spanish Revolution, as the high
water mark of libertarian organisation, provides a host of lessons for
today’s anti-authoritarians. And, as we have seen, sifting through the
Spanish experience for useful insights is in fact part of a long-standing
anarchist tradition. So too is the promotion of anarchist vision. I hope
this essay can help stimulate both of those tendencies.

* Readers unfamiliar with the Parecon model can find out more at:
http://www.zmag.org/parecon/indexnew.htm

** [A note on sources: Primary documents (i.e. first-hand accounts)
concerning the structure and dynamics of the Spanish collectives and
syndicates are frustratingly small in number, though much of what there is
has been translated into English. In all practicality, the works of Gaston
Leval, Augustin Souchy and Jose Peirats represent all that is available
for examining the Revolution's economic aspects in any detail. Leval's
work is by far the best of the lot, and I make extensive use of it above.
However, even Leval's work is beset with minor problems including a lack
of detail on matters of procedure as well as in the quality of the English
translation.]

(Unless otherwise noted, all page numbers refer to Leval.)
-Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth. Cambridge University Press, 1976
(first published 1943).
-Sam Dolgoff, Fragments: A memoir. 1986. (See excerpt online
at:http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/dolgoff-controv.html)
-Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution. Freedom Press.
-Jose Peirats, Anarchists in Spanish Revolution. Freedom Press.
-Augustin Souchy, With the Peasants of Aragon. (available online at:
www.anarchosyndicalism.net)
-Tom Wetzel, "About Anarchism". ZNet, Aug. 29, 2003. Online at:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=5&ItemID=4106

Dave Markland lives in Vancouver and is a member of the Vancouver
Participatory Economics Collective. (http://vanparecon.resist.ca)