Global Studies 120 Short Paper

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Spanish Anarchist Sketches of Libertarian Society

Although the Spanish anarchists endorsed different aspects of the Bakunin and Kropotkin versions of anarchist philosophy at various times, they did not officially present a detailed picture o f the kind of society they wanted to create to displace capitalism until M ay 1936, two months before the outbreak of the Civil War. As early as 1919 the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo had gone on record as favoring libertarian communism, it was not until the Zaragoza congress of the CN T in M ay 1936 that they adopted a long resolu tion setting forth their ideas concerning the details of the reorganiza tion of the Spanish economy, polity and society.

There were those in the Spanish libertarian movement who were strongly opposed to any attempt to sketch the future libertarian society. For instance, Federica Montseny wrote in August 1931: ‘Anarchism is an ideal without boundaries. It cannot be enclosed within the confines of a programme.’1

M ost sketches by Spanish anarchist leaders of the future liber tarian communist society tended to be general and vague in terms of specific post-revolutionary institutions and how they would func tion. Xavier Paniagua has noted that many, if not most, o f them saw the anarchist society as being overwhelmingly rural and basically communalist.’ A number of them were specifically anti-industrial in their thinking.2 Some were even vocally anti-urban.3 At least a few

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wrote nostalgically about a ‘return to the Middle Ages’ of agrarian communities.4

However, during the decades preceding the Civil War, a number of anarchist leaders and intellectuals had presented more or less detailed accounts o f their concepts o f the kind of anarchist society they wanted to create. Before recounting at some length the outline of the Zaragoza resolution, it is therefore worthwhile to discuss a few of these concepts.

La N ueva U topia o f R icardo M ella

Ricardo Mella was one of the outstanding Spanish anarchist leaders of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Other anarchist writers, including Juan Diaz del M oral, Diego Abad dc Santillan and M ax Nettlau, called him ‘the most gifted of anarchist thinkers’.5 He wrote about many aspects o f anarchist theory and policy, and summed up his vision of the future libertarian society of Spain in a novel, La Nueva Utopia. As the name of the work implies, it had a good deal in common with the ideal societies characteristic o f the Utopian Socialists of the nineteenth century. George Esenwein noted:

The social system of Nueva Utopia is grounded on two fun damental principles: liberty and equality. Natural resources - that is, the forests, oil, gas, iron ore as well as the bountiful fruits of the soil - now belong to everyone . . . The citizens themselves are related through a system of reciprocally binding pacts . . . These vital links, which are the only means by which individuals form economic and social relations, are highly flexible in that they can be rescinded or annulled at any time . . . Another unifying force in society is the general feeling of social solidarity. No longer plagued by political, religious and other sources of social friction which formerly divided society into opposition factions, the people of La Nueva Utopia have only to worry about the general welfare of society. . .

The society that emerges in M ella’s talc is one which in nearly

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every way conforms to the principles o f all anarchist schools. It is not, for example, dominated by a particular kind of economic system - although Mella makes it clear in the story that collectivism is without question the superior form of economic arrangement. Men and women are free to choose whatever form of exchange they are predisposed to: ‘if the worker wishes to reserve the right to exchange the products of his labour, no one will impede him, if he wishes to donate his products to the community at large, no one will stop him, if he wants to turn them over to a cooperative, he is free to do so .7

O robón Fernández’s Version o f Libertarian Society

Valeriano Orobón Fernández was one of the leading figures o f the CN T in the pro-Civil War period who died soon after the War began. In 1925, he provided a sketch, although an abbreviated one, of the post-revolutionary libertarian society:

The most elemental manifestation of this regime would be the ‘Unity Production Cooperative’, in lightly populated areas. This organism would include all the people of the Commune capable of working. The Sindicato of today is potentially tom orrow’s producers’ cooperative. Consequently, where the former exists, the second will be viable . . . In more heavily populated areas, the a most adequate economic organism would be the ‘Specific Industry Cooperative’. Its purpose would not be different from the other, except that in the circumstances it would confine itself to its specialty. Generally, its mission would be the same: taking over the means o f production, establishing the conditions and methods for a new organization of labor, etc. The simple transformation of our Industrial Unions . . . would give us this second type of cooperative. . .

On organization of the economy beyond the local level, Orobón Fernández wrote:

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The connection among the cooperatives could be the establish ment o f the two groups: 1. That o f ‘specific nature’ through the creation o f Federations of Industry which would group the specific cooperatives o f the cities and specialized sections o f the communal cooperatives. Their purpose would be to apply meas ures o f a general nature to improve the industry, regularize the administration of raw materials, etc. 2. That o f ‘general rela tions’ o f all the active organisms through the constitution of a General Intercooperative Confederation, the mission of which would be inter-industrial collaboration of firms on a national level. Also, it would assume representation of the country in its international relations. . .8

Higinio N o ja R uiz’s View o f Post-Revolutionary Anarchism

Higinio N oja Ruiz, an anarchist professor at the University of Valencia and contributor to the libertarian periodical Estudios, published in 1933 an extensive pamphlet discussing, among other things, the future organization of libertarian society. He argued:

With the triumph of the revolution, each locality will take possession within its municipal limits o f the exploitation in common of its riches. In so far as possible, parcelization and the development o f small property should be avoided as one of the most serious impediments to the installation of a communist regime. But where this cannot be entirely avoided, it must be established that all production, both that resulting from individ ual cultivation and collectivized cultivation must pass through the administration and distribution of the Commune, free Municipality or Committee of the Local Trade Union Federation, depending on which each locality adopts.

This prescription was followed in most of the rural collectives set up by the anarchists during the Civil War, particularly in those of Aragon.

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N oja Ruiz went on to argue: in the large population centers, production must be in the hands of the Sindicatos, whose com mittees, aided by W orkshop Committees and Factory Councils, in accordance with the workers of local units and general neces sities, will undertake to regulate it. General administration would seem most likely to be carried out by the Committees o f the Local Federations, formed by one or more representatives o f each Sindicato . ’

This anarchist writer appended to his article several charts outlin ing various phases o f the future libertarian economic organization. These charts are reminiscent of the structures sketched by the Industrial Workers o f the World of the United States a quarter o f a century earlier.

N oja Ruiz’s charts indicated the relationship of the individual factory committee to the local industrial union, to the respective national industrial union; alongside a structure leading from the local commune, to regional federations o f communes, to a national con federation of communes. Similarly, N oja Ruiz sketched a national organization o f agricultural production, starting with a local com mittee of exploitation, to an agricultural sindicato , to the national agricultural federation. Finally, he joined factory councils through their respective local unions and federations o f unions, as well as their national industrial federations and regional union confedera tions, to the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, which would have a national labor council to coordinate all of the economy. On each level there would be specific dependencies for collecting statistics and other purposes.

N oja Ruiz summed up his notion of the future libertarian eco nomic organization thus: in all these graphs it is seen that all organization begins with the individual, to the collective invariably. The autonomous individual in the autonomous section; the auto nomous section in the autonomous sindicato; the sindicato in the Federations and Confederations, also autonom ous.’9

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Isaac Puente’s Version o f Libertarian Society

A year before the publication of N oja Ruiz’s pamphlet, Dr Isaac Puente had published his own interpretation of the future libertarian society. Puente was a medical doctor who was one of the principal Spanish anarchist intellectuals in the period before the Civil War. He died during the conflict.

Isaac Puente started out by defining libertarian communism: \ . . the organization of Society without the State, and without private property. For this, there is no need to invent anything, or to create any new organism. The nuclei o f organization, around which the economic future will be organized are present in today’s society: they are the Sindicato and the Free M unicipality.’10 He added: ‘Social organization has no other objective than to make common every thing which constitutes social wealth, that is to say, the means and factors of production and the products themselves, to make common also the obligation of contributing to production, each according to his ability and aptitude, and to undertake then to distribute products among all, in accord with individual need.’ 11

Puente outlined the principles for organization of both urban regions and rural communities. He set forth several basic points with regard to the former, which included the following:

Considering that each professional group is capable of org anizing its own affairs, tutelage is not necessary, and the State is superfluous. Initiative passes to professional organizations. Control of teaching to the teachers. Health to health profes sionals. Communications to its employees. The internal regime o f a factory is decided by the technicians and workers meet ing in assembly, and the Federation of Sindicatos controls production. . .

Men are grouped by the identity o f their preoccupations and needs in the Sindicato, and for convenience of location and community of interests in the free Municipality . . . All citizens are made equal only as producers. Officers are administrative, temporary, without allowing exemption from production, and always at the disposal o f the decisions o f the Assemblies . . . In

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economic organization, the hierarchy goes from the base. Accords of a Committee can be revoked by a Plenum; those of the latter by the Assembly, and those o f the Assembly by the People.12

Isaac Puente added:

The Sindicato brings together individuals, associating them by their type of work . . . Workers o f a factory or workshop, constituting the smallest cell, with autonomy in what is peculiar to it. These cells, brought together with their counterparts, form the section within the Sindicato of Craft or Industry . . . The Sindicatos of the locality are federated, constituting the Local Federation, which has a Committee chosen by delegations o f the Sindicatos to a Plenum, made up of all the Committees and by the General Assembly, which is wrhat has maximum sovereignty . . . The Free Municipality is the Assembly of the workers of a small locality, village or hamlet, with sovereignty to take care of locality.13

It is in the countryside that the realization of Libertarian Communism is easiest, since it means only putting into practice the Free municipality. The Free Municipality or Commune is the meeting in Assembly of all the neighbors of a village or ward, with sovereignty to administer or order all local matters, but first o f all production and distribution. There will not exist private property except in the use o f what each needs, such as housing, clothing, furniture, tools, the garden left to each neighbor and small animals or chickens which he might want for consumption. Everything beyond what is necessary can be taken over at any time by the Municipality, after agreement of the Assembly, since all that we accumulate with out needing it does not belong to us, since we take it from others.

All neighbors will be equal: 1. To produce and cooperate in maintenance of the commune, except for differences in aptitude . . . 2. To participate in administrative decisions in the Assem blies, and 3. To consume in accordance with their needs or

14rationing.

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Puente saw distribution of consumer goods as being organized by ‘the producing sindicatos, using Cooperatives or the buildings of stores and markets.’ Each sin dicat o member would have a producer’s card which would give its possessor the following rights: ‘1. To consume in accordance with rationing or his need, all the products distributed in the locality. 2. To have the use of a decent house, indispensable furniture, yard fowl or a garden if the collective decides so. 3. To use public services. 4. To take part in the voting decision of the factory or workshop of the Section, the Sindicato and the Local Federation.’

The local federation ‘will take care o f providing the needs of the locality and developing its specific industry, either for better distribu tion or for meeting national needs.’15

In so far as the organization of the national economy was con cerned, Puente argued that ‘above local organization, there is no need for a superstructure, except those with a special function which cannot be undertaken locally. Congresses are the only things which interpret the national will and will carry it out in passing and transitionally, the sovereignty which is given them by the votes of the assemblies.’ The only exceptions to this rule, Puente argued, were national union federations o f communications and transport workers, which are clearly in need of national organization.16

Alfonso M artinez R izo ’s Version o f Libertarian Society

Another version of the post-revolutionary society was presented in 1933 by Alfonso M artinez Rizo, vice-president of the C N T ’s sin dicato o f Intellectual Workers. Like the other writers we have discussed, Martinez sketched the libertarian organization of both urban and rural parts o f the economy, but placed special emphasis on the importance of the disappearance of money, and dealt with other problems not always touched upon by all anarchist theorists.

Beginning his detailed description of post-revolutionary society, Martinez argued:

The norm and guide can and must be the present functioning of

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the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, since it is governed by the same principles. With proclamation of libertarian com munism, and the Sindicatos taking over all economic activities, its organisms would take over general administration. In those organisms . . . offices are o f six-month duration, those holding them being eligible for re-election. O f those, the president, secretary and treasurer, arc elected in the Assembly by all the members. Each autonomous section has its Administrative Junta and elects delegates to the Plenum of the Committee. The Plenum elects among its members the vice-president, vice-sec- rctary, accountant, and librarian. All these posts arc carried out without pay. It will also be logical that the present trade union jurisdiction and federal organization continue.. } 7

Martinez argued that the reorganization o f the economy along the lines he suggested would be undertaken immediately on a national basis: ‘On Libertarian Communism being proclaimed there would meet a National Congress, which would establish the points, fun damental and secondary though basic, o f a federal pact o f all local com m unities.. . ,18

Martinez went into some detail on the reorganization of the urban economy: T h e workshop committees will take the place of the bourgeois specialists . . . the factory council that o f the admini strators. The industrial union that of the employers groups. The local, regional federations and national confederation, the place of local, regional and national capitalist conglomerates, the national labor economic committee that of the national economic council. The industrial federations and the labor economic council will have only technical functions, and the other organism will have both technical and social ones.’

Martinez went on to say:

All these will be subject to a Committee or Council named in general assembly of workers or by representatives o f these meeting in National Congress. This National Committee or Council, charged with executing the accords of the assemblies or congresses, will be revocable at any time, and consequently will

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be submitted to permanent control of the workers, not exercis ing delegated authority. . .

The National Confederation will also have a technical council formed by representatives of the industrial federations and that will be the Labor Economic Council . . . This Labor Economic Council will inform the regional economic councils which will distribute work to the local economic councils and these to their respective industrial unions, thus connecting production with exchange and consumption. This Labor Economic Council will be controlled by the National Committee of the C N T, respon sible to the Sindicatos. The Labor Economic Council would also control international trade, seeking to maintain the country’s balance of payments.19

In so far as the rural economy was concerned, Martinez said: ‘Given the basic autonomy of our system, the local agrarian communities can decide, in accord with the indications o f the Labor Economic Council and supported by the agreements of the national congresses, what class o f cultivation and what kind of crops should be grown, and then the products will be exchanged for industrial products of equal value in terms of hours of work. In these conditions, with the agrarian workers receiving the full product o f their labor, or its equivalent, the level o f all will be improved under the new

9 ñregim e. . . Martinez stressed the suppression of traditional money, and the

substitution of another means o f distribution, with some similarity to the ideas o f Proudhon. ‘The new money will be evaluated and denominated in hours of work. It will consist o f bonds emitted by the unions, equivalent to the hours of work of every worker. These bonds will be issued weekly and only will have value during the following week. So that each can meet his needs, the workers who have children or a wife who cannot work, once this is indicated to his union, will receive, on collecting his weekly bond, others to meet the needs of his family members. Invalids will receive forty-eight hours of work per week from the social assistance offices.’

Prices o f goods would be set in hours-of-work’ terms, by each locality, so as to clear the market, in the light of the value o f the

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bonds issued to the members of the community. The bonds would be valid only in the local community.21

As for commerce among various communities, Martinez wrote: ‘For . . . exchange among different autonomous communities, prod ucts will be evaluated in hours of work, payment being in tokens which will then be exchanged to equalize sales and purchases. Thus, then, there will be two prices: one representing the exact number of hours of labor invested in production and which will be used for exchange between different autonomous municipalities; the other, which will be the same multiplied by a variable factor, which will serve in each locality to facilitate the sale to the public of all goods.’22

Martinez also dealt with two problems which were not economic. These were crime and the armed forces. In relation to crime, Martinez wrote:

With the disappearance of yours and mine and authority attributed to anyone, there will disappear automatically almost all kinds o f crime. The criterion that no one can exercise authority suppresses the posts o f magistrates and judges. That is not to say that justice will disappear, that will be carried out by plebiscite by the collective . . . We consider the delinquent of passion as disturbed, and we only feel that he merits treatment as a sick person. In our peculiar concept, in libertarian com munism there will only continue one punishment for the only crime which can continue in such a regime. The crime is disobedience to the agreements of the collective or to the prin ciples o f libertarian communism. The only punishment that the author conceives o f is exile to bourgeois countries, so long as those continue; when one no longer exists, exile from the collective, which will force him to live alone at the cost o f individual work.23

In the face o f the attack on a revolutionary libertarian Spain by capitalist states, which he expected would take place, Martinez admitted that military defense would be necessary, in spite o f the anarchists’ traditional anti-militarism. However, his solution to the

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problem was one which was undoubtedly widespread in anarchist ranks, and was to raise serious problems for the libertarians with the outbreak of the Civil War. He wrote:

Many times I have heard the objection that libertarian com munism is incapable o f war, since it requires that there be those who command and those who obey, which is contrary to its principles. This objection comes from confusing two different things, the exercise of authority and technical direction. Also in the workshop the worker will have to work as the technician indicates and not as he pleases, and the technician will neither be an authority nor will command; he will be a working com panion and his way of working will be precisely that of studying how the manual worker must work to get the best o u tp u t...

Equally, in the units o f the proletariat in arms, power will always be the result of decisions o f the collective which puts in the workers hands the arms to defend it. The organic units will have the mission of fulfilling and seeing fulfilled the agreements of the collective, and in that, as in anything else, there will be the workshop committee and the technicians, who will be the officers. The latter will decide in every case how the soldiers should operate to obtain the hoped-for triumph over the enemy. The committee will supervise his action. The soldier who does not behave as the officer indicates will be guilty o f the same fault that the worker docs who refuses to follow the indications o f the technician.24

The Libertarian Society According to G aston Leval

Another significant sketch of the post-revolutionary libertarian society by an anarchist theoretician was that o f Gaston Leval. Although he was by birth a Frenchman, Gaston Leval (real name, Pierre Filler) was a member of the Spanish Confederación Nacional del Trabajo from at least the First World War. He was a member of the CN T delegation to Russia in the early 1920s, and was one of those who strongly opposed affiliation of the CN T to the Red International of

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Labor Unions. During the Civil War, Leval was one of the most important publicists of the achievements of the anarchists after July 18 1936. He spent some years in Argentina before returning to Spain a couple o f months after the Civil War began.25

Leval’s sketch of the future libertarian society appears to have been published in Barcelona in 1936, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. It was revised and reprinted in 1937.

Leval started out by attacking several ideas in anarchist thinking which he thought were either excessively emphasized or were mis taken. One of the over emphasized was autonomy:

There has been repeated and there has been written . . . the mentioned formula: ‘the individual is free within the group, the group is free within the federation’ . We have always, on hearing it, our mental reservation . . . If we arc really free, if we can or not fulfill a resolution taken, if for every debated problem there is formed a minority in rebellion, what other practice could be carried out, how is it possible to live together? M alatesta has already insisted on the necessity of fulfilling the accords taken by the majority, and this necessity is being accepted by those who understand that without compromise collective and individual existence is not possible. . .

On entering a group, I do not consider myself free. I am subject to a common norm, to a responsibility, to a task from which I cannot flee. I am not autonomous. I abdicate part o f my autonomy to contribute to the welfare of all, that may or may not react in my favor. Unless one wants to play with words, subtle philosophy of different dialectics separated from truth, when a revolutionary joins with others, he is not going to exercise his freedom, but to fulfil a social duty, forgetting about himself.26

Gaston Leval also attacked the argument which Kropotkin put forth in one of his books in favor of national autarchy: ‘It is not an ideal that each region is sufficient unto itself; as an aspiration, much superior and much more noble is a vast and permanent cooperation throughout the earth . . . ’

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Gaston Leval also opposed the degree of heterogeneity for the libertarian economy which Ricardo Mella had advocated. ‘How can one conceive of economic relations among communist producers’ groups and collectivist ones? Some offer money in exchange for products. Others want products for products. The eases multiply. How can one reach understanding? Hundreds of entities will practise a concept opposed by hundreds o f others. Economic life would deteriorate quickly.’ He said that only the kind of local self-suf- ficiency advocated by Kropotkin would make this kind of system viable, and added: ‘This is completely impossible, and as soon as one observes the multiplicity of articles necessary for civilized life, and the productive possibilities o f each region, province or corner of whatever part of the world, he imposition of exchange and general cooperation is obvious; to carry out this exchange, the regime of relations must be the same.28

Leval sketched the hierarchy of organizations which would con duct economic affairs under libertarian communism: ‘ 1. The workers considered as individuals; 2. The craft sections formed by these workers; 3. The industrial unions composed of the related craft sections; 4. The federations of industry made up of industrial unions; 5. The Industrial Confederation made up of the industrial federa tions.’

He described the way in which the levels o f organization would function:

1. Each craft section names a technical delegate, and the craft delegates constitute the Administrative Committee - generally this representation appears to us more necessary than that o f the factory or workshop Committees - more revolutionary than technical, while we must look at organization from the point of view of production; that is to say, with an eminently technical criterion. 2. The Congress o f the Industrial Federation names a Committee composed of delegates o f certain industrial zones, in accordance with their importance and special characteristics; this would permit the Central Committees to maintain more direct contact and know better the general reality of the country. 3. The Confederation Congress would in their turn name a

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Central Federal Commission and without doubt various regional ones, made up of delegates o f the various industrial federations, in proportions dictated by the circumstances (numerical import ance of each federation, intensity and characteristic o f the work to be carried on, e tc . . ,29

In so far as the organization o f the rural economy was concerned, Levai argued:

The peasants must organize themselves communally - and not be organized in unions - in accordance with their traditions. . . This form would respond to the objectives sought. The objec tives o f peasant activity are the provision of the cultivated products of the land, the chicken coops, the meat and other animal products, skins, wool, e tc . . .

The work of the peasant must respond to general need, not to his caprice or particular interpretation of th in g s... It is a dangerous norm, and false to affirm, as is done too often, that the peasants will give for exchange, after keeping what they need, the excess products. It is equally false to think that way about any kind of production.

. . .A s in industry the administrative mechanism would be federalist, the decisions taken in the congresses, and the work determined by the permanent commissions would come from the wishes expressed by the rank and file, by congresses ranging from specialized regional federations, to the General Congress of Agriculture and G razing.. .30

Distribution of both industrial and agricultural products, according to Levai, would be through cooperatives:

There would be circulation of products, from productive zones to consuming zones. The cooperatives would be charged with carrying it o u t . ..

To their central deposits would come, in the cities, the excess product of local industrial production. These cooperatives would not distribute haphazardly, or according to the sporadic

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demand of each locality. Each would specialize in one or various types o f articles, each would have its own district to supply; a certain number of small cities or localities. The inhabitants of that district would be directed to it according to a generally established order. Thus there would be formed a vast network whose activities would cover all points and all consumption of the territory. . .

These cooperatives would transmit them to the centers of the productive organisms diverse requests, which would permanently reflect oscillations of demand. And they would become the sources of information of the federations and the Industrial and Agricultural-Grazing Confederations, contributing to the direc tion of productive activities.’31

Leval proposed union membership as the basis of distribution of goods to consumers: T h e best form that occurs to us consists of creating a network of distributive organisms in connection with the producing o rgan ism s... There could exist, in parallel, a general cooperative associated with the same union, which would have sections in contact with sections in the neighborhoods. The workers, or their families, will go to the sectional cooperative of their union to look for consumer articles. The presentation of the trade union card would be enough to accredit the producer with the right to consume.

The Ideas o f Diego A bad de Santillan

Finally, Diego Abad de Santillan, who earlier had been opposed to trying to sketch the future libertarian communist society, published early in 1936 The Economic Organization o f the Revolution, which did just that. Gomez C asas has noted of this work:

The author condemns economic separatism and supports the idea o f federal organization of the economy, beginning with factory councils or local trade or industrial unions and moving up to local and regional councils, assisted by technical and

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statistical data, and up to the national or federal economic council. The local council, coordinator o f local organizations, would replace municipalities and elected b o d ie s ... According to Santillán, the federal economic council would replace the State. There would be no political power, only an economic and administrative regu la tor... Since decisions would be based on figure’s and statistics, compulsion by any organization would be counter-productive and impossible. Such a coordinating body would guarantee a free society o f producers and consumers, would coordinate the plans developed by all the organizations, and would respect the relative autonomy of all the federated bodies.33

N ature o f the C N T Z aragoza Resolution

All of the sketches which we have so far discussed represented the opinions of individual anarchist leaders and theorists. However, in M ay 1936, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo adopted an official outline of the kind of society which it wanted to establish after the hoped-for revolution.

César Lorenzo, the son of one-time CN T national secretary Horacio Prieto, said o f this document: ‘After sixty-seven years of tests and many experiences rich in lessons, it presents an idyllic program . . . in which puerility and Utopia are given free rein, with total disregard of the peculiarities o f Spain, the international situa tion, the historic moment and the means o f attaining the new promised land.’34

The C N T ’s Zaragoza resolution seems to reflect considerably more the Kropotkin version of anarchist ideas, and even that of Pierre Proudhon, than that o f Michael Bakunin. Certainly there seemed to be relatively little room in the document for national industrial unions as the center for the reorganization of the national economy and society. Rather, the emphasis was on the kind of communal organization that had been suggested by Peter Kropotkin.

Although the Zaragoza resolution conceded that ‘. .. to construct with mathematical precision the society o f the future would be

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absurd, since often there exists a real chasm between theory and practice. . . ’ it did in fact sketch in considerable detail how the future society would be organized.

However, before doing so, the resolution noted: ‘The revolution cannot be based either on mutual aid, on solidarity or on the archaic idea of charity. These three formulas . . . must be recast and perfected in new norms of social relations which find their clearest interpreta tion in libertarian communism: to give to each human being that which his needs require, without the satisfaction of these having other limitations than those imposed by the needs o f the newly created economy.’

Details o f the Z aragoza Resolution

The C N T ’s Zaragoza resolution then began to describe the new society:

With the violent aspect o f the revolution terminated, there will be declared abolished: private property, the State, the principle o f authority, and consequently, classes which divide man into exploiters and exploited, oppressed and oppressors. Wealth socialized, the organization o f the producers, now free, will undertake direct administration of production and consump tion. With establishment in each locality of the Libertarian Commune, we shall put into place the new social mechanism. The producers of each branch of trade, united in their Unions and in their work places will freely determine the form in which these will be organized. . .

The resolution set forth a general principle for the reorganization of the economy: ‘the economic plan of organization, throughout national production, will adjust to the strictest principles of social economy, directly administered by the producers through their various organs o f production, designated in general assemblies of the various organizations, and always controlled by them.’

In the urban areas, the resolution established ‘as the organ of

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relations within the Commune and in the workplace, the workshop or factory Council, reaching pacts with other labor centers. As organ of relations o f Union to Union (association of producers) the Councils of Statistics and Production, which will federate among themselves, forming a network of constant and close relations among all the producers of the Iberian Confederation.’

In the rural areas, the resolution provide:

As the base, the producers of the Commune, which uses all the natural riches o f its political and geographic area. As organ of relations, the Council o f Cultivation, which will include techni cal elements and workers belonging to associations o f agricul tural producers, charged with orienting the intensification of production, indicating the land most appropriate to that, in accord with its chemical composition. These Councils o f Culti vation will establish the same network of relations as the W orkshop, Factory Councils and those o f Production and Statistics, complementing the free federation represented by the Commune as a political entity and geographic subdivision.

The resolution set forth not only how production would be organized, but how consumption would be determined. It provided that ‘letters of the producer, issued by the W orkshop and Factory Councils will be sufficient for them to acquire what is necessary to fulfil their needs. The producer’s letter constitutes the basis of exchange, which will be subject to these two regulating elements: First, that it be intransférable; second, that there be adopted a procedure through which the letter indicates the value of labor by days of work and that this value have at m ost a year o f validity to acquire products. For dependent elements of the population, it will be the Communal Councils which issue the letters o f consum ption. . . ’

This provision would seem to be more like Pierre Proudhon’s labor banknote scheme than like the ‘to each according to his need’ preached by Peter Kropotkin. It perhaps introduced a note o f confu sion, when two months later the C N T ’s members set about establish ing peasant collectives and organizing manufacturing firms which they had seized. The former tended to follow the Kropotkin formula,

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whereas the factory workers often more nearly approached the Proudhon prescription.

For dealing with national economic problems, the resolution pro vided that ‘Both the Associations of industrial producers and Associa tions of agricultural producers will federate nationally . . . if, carried to this point by the process of work to which they are dedicated, they esteem it convenient for the most fruitful development of the Economy; and similarly there will be federated those services needed to facilitate logical and necessary relations among all the Libertarian Communes o f the Peninsula.’

The resolution also set forth the basis o f the political reorganiza tion of post-revolutionary Spain. T h e political expression of our revolution must be based on this trilogy: The Individual, the Com mune, and the Federation . . . The basis of this administration will consequently be the Commune. Those Communes will be auto nomous and will be federated regionally and nationally to carry out objectives o f a general character. The right o f autonomy will not exclude the duty to fulfil agreements of collective convenience.’

On the political form of the new society the resolution stated:

The Communes will federate on a county and regional basis, fixing voluntarily their geographical limits, when it will be convenient to unite in a single Commune small villages, hamlets and places. Together these Communes will constitute an Iberian Confederation of Autonomous Libertarian Com m unes. . .

For the function of distributing production and so that the Communes can better supply themselves, there can be created supplementary organizations for the purpose. For example: a Confederal Council o f Production and Distribution, with direct representatives of the National Federations of Production and of the annual Congress of Communes.

The resolution insisted that ‘the Commune must take care o f what interests the individual.’ More specifically, i t must take care of all the tasks o f ordering, regulating and beautifying the locality; of the housing of its residents; o f the articles and products put at its service by the Unions or Associations of producers. It will also take care of

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health, of community statistics and collective needs; o f teaching; of the sanitary and conservation establishments, and perfection of the local media o f communication.’

There was also strong insistence on decentralization of power, and resistance to bureaucratization of public authority:

The procedure for election of the Communal Councils will be established in conformity with a system in which differences of population require, taking account of the political decentraliza tion of the metropoli, establishing in them Federations of Communes. None of these organs will have executive or bureau cratic character. Except for those people who carry out technical or statistical functions, the others will carry out their mission as producers, meeting after the work day to discuss questions of detail which don’t require the decision of the communal assem blies . . .

Assemblies will meet as often as needed by the interests o f the Commune, on petition of the members o f the Communal Council, or by the desire o f the inhabitants o f each of them . . . The inhabitants o f a Commune will discuss among themselves their internal problems: production, consumption, instruction, health and anything necessary for moral and economic develop ment. When problems are dealt with which affect a county or province, it must be the Federations which deliberate, and in the meetings and assemblies all Communities will be represented, and the delegates will bring the points of view previously agreed upon.

Certainly, this prescription for the organization of the post-revolutio- nary polity was approached to some degree after the outbreak of the Civil War in rural areas where the anarchists were predominant, most notably in Aragon. However, there was no effort - or even possibility - o f establishing that pattern in the urban parts o f the country.

There was similar provision for dealing with problems of wider geographical scope. The resolution provided that ‘in matters of regional character, it will be the Regional Federation which puts

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agreements into practice, and these will represent the sovereign desires o f all the inhabitants o f the region. Thus, it begins with the individual, passes then to the Commune, from there to the Federation, and finally to the Confederation. Similarly, we shall come to discussion of all problems of national scope, since our organisms will be complementing one another. The national organization will regu late relations o f international character.. . ’

The Zaragoza resolution also dealt with social reorganization. It proposed:

The disappearance of the present system of judicial correction, and so, o f the instruments of punishment (jails etc.) This Statement presumes that social factors are the principal cause of so-called crimes in the present state o f things, and thus, with the disappearance of the causes which bring about crime, in most cases it will cease to ex ist. . .

Libertarian Communism, then, will base its ‘corrective action’ on Medicine and Pedagogy, the only preventive measures which modern science justifies. When any individual, victim of patho logical phenomena, acts against the harmony which must exist among men, therapeutic pedagogy will cure his disequilibrium and stimulate in him the ethical sense o f social responsibility that an insane heritage naturally denied him.

The CN T resolution also dealt briefly with problems of the family and sexual relations: ‘The revolution should not operate violently against the family, except in those cases o f mismatched families, in which case these will be recognized and their dissolution sup ported . . . Libertarian Communism proclaims free love, without any regulation but the free will of the man and the woman, guarantees the children the safeguards o f the collectivity, and saving the latter from human aberrations by the application of eugenic biological principles. . . ’

The anticlerical traditions o f Spanish anarchism were confirmed in the Zaragoza document: ‘Religion, purely subjective manifestation of the human being, will be recognized so long as it is confined to the individual conscience, but never can be considered as a form of

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public orientation or moral or intellectual coercion. Individuals will be free to conceive of whatever moral ideas they deem convenient, all sects disappearing.’35

Special attention was paid to the educational needs of the masses.

We have a pedagogical task to fulfil immediately after the social revolution. Culture will be provided for those deprived of i t . . . The immediate task will be to organize among the illiterate population an elementary culture, consisting, for ex ample, of teaching to read, write, accounting, physical culture, health, historical process o f evolution and revolution, theory of the inexistence of God, etc. This can be carried out by a large number of educated young people who, during one or two years, controlled and oriented by the National Federation of Teachers which, immediately after the proclamation of Libertarian communism, will take charge of all teaching centers.

We regard as a fundamental function of pedagogy aid to the formation of men with their own judgement - noting that in speaking of men, we do so in a generic sense - for which it will be necessary for the teacher to cultivate all the faculties of the child, to achieve the complete development of his possibili t ie s . . .

Finally, the Zaragoza resolution dealt with what was to become one of the most bitter issues, both within the CN T and between it and other elements in Republican Spain, during the Civil War, that was the role and nature o f the military. It proclaimed:

A permanent army constitutes the greatest danger for the revolu tion . . . The armed people will be the best guarantee against all attempts to restore the destroyed regime by interior or exterior forces. There are thousands o f workers who have been in the barracks and know modern military techniques. . .

Each Commune should have its arms and elements o f defense, until the revolution has been definitively consolidated, and these will not be destroyed to convert them into instruments of w o rk . . . If the moment arrives, the People will mobilize rapidly

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to confront the enemy, the producers returning to their work places as soon as they have completed their defensive mission. In this general mobilization all persons o f both sexes capable o f fighting will be included to carry out the many different combat missions.36

The Inadequacy o f the Z aragoza Document

In spite of adopting this long document indicating what they hoped to do after the revolution, the delegates to the Zaragoza CN T congress ‘did not adopt any analysis of the political situation. . . ’ As a result, Cesar Lorenzo insisted that the anarchists ‘were obliged on July 19 to improvise in total incoherence.’37

Certainly, it is notable that this document gave at best a very secondary role in the future society to the national industrial unions (federations) o f the CN T. The emphasis in the C N T program was on the individual, the commune and the regional federation, with little reference to the hierarchy of C N T unions as having any role in the reconstruction of the national Economy.

Perhaps this ‘oversight’ is due to the fact that the Zaragoza Congress of the C N T, which among other things brought about the reunification of the radical and moderate factions o f the organiza tion, was dominated by the former, which had always viewed the national industrial unions with scepticism. This division in the Spanish anarchist forces was o f long duration, before, during and even after the Civil War.

Fidel Miro described this long-lasting split among the Spanish anarchists:

The most notable discrepancies have been more virulent in the tactical area than in the theoretical. . . the ‘ultras’ or maximalists arc partisans of propaganda by the deed - direct action badly understood - if the permanent revolutionary high school; that is to say, continuous violent action and the immediate revolution; while the possibilists have always been more cautious, always so in the use o f violence, without discarding it totally, when

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they considered that violence was the necessary reply to un limited repressive action of the bourgeoisie or o f the public powers.

While the maximalists almost always confused tactics with principles, considering them inseparable parts o f the same body, the possibilists judged that tactics must always be circumstan tial, depending on the exigencies and needs o f the moment and place, but never in contradiction to principles.39

One of the principal leaders o f what Fidel Miro referred to as ‘the possibilists’, Juan Peiro, who was to serve as an anarchist member of the Largo Caballero government in 1936-7, had some years earlier expressed opposition to the C N T ’s adopting the kind of ideological document that was endorsed by the Zaragoza congress: \ .. the C N T being characteristically an economic class organization, o f hetero geneous composition, it cannot and must not have a permanent ideological objective or an airtight set of id e a s .. .’40

Peiro had also made an observation which would seem to be directly pertinent to the Zaragoza document:

The realities which economic-social problems present to the peoples are much more complex than the pseudorealities seen by the ultrarevolutionary sectors which have prevailed in recent times. The life o f the peoples is no longer conceivable in that primitive form, rural, simple, very appropriate for peasants and shepherds, but incompatible for life in the great cities, where life, in contact with the extraordinary progress o f science and new expansions o f civilization, necessarily has a corresponding org anization, disciplined, which takes care of the needs o f life . . . 1

There is no doubt that in the society emancipated from the tutelage o f capitalism and the State, the organization of pro duction, if only transitorily - and we presume that the transition will have to be extended for a long time - will be in the hands of the unions, and we admit that these have within them sufficient elements with the capacity for this, as we suppose that likewise the superior organizations - which hopefully will be suppressed as soon as possible - will have the capacity to organize relations

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among the different industries, etc., in so far as the exchange of raw materials and social necessities are concerned.. .42

We have no indication whether Peiro and other C N T leaders associated with him raised any serious objections to the adoption of the Zaragoza Congress resolution. However, Eduardo Com in Colomer says that, together with two maximalists, Juan García Oliver and Federica Montseny, Juan Lopez, a possibilist and CN T leader from Valencia, was one of those sponsoring the resolution.43

Within about two months o f the Zaragoza congress, the anarchist transformation of Spanish society was to be converted from a theoretical proposal into a practical possibility, at least in certain parts o f Republican Spain. The C N T in Catalonia, where in the days following the suppression of the military uprising there, power was almost completely in the hands o f the anarchists, held a regional plenum which debated whether to go ahead and establish libertarian communism. The plenum decided overwhelmingly against doing so, in the face o f the need for cooperation with a wide range of other groups in the military struggle against the France forces.

Only in that part o f the Aragon region, which was largely recap tured from the rebellious army by anarchist militiamen from Catalonia, was anything approaching libertarian communism actually installed during the first year o f the Civil War. Anarchist rural communes there were brought together under the Council o f Aragon, which corresponded more or less to the pattern established in the Zaragoza resolution.

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