Michael Seidman, Workers Against Work
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Workers Against Work Labor in Paris and Barcelona During the Popular Fronts Michael Seidman UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley ∙ Los Angeles ∙ London Epigraph Nous voulons voir la fin du sinistre loisir parce qu’il suppose le travail—et que le travail n’est qu’un bon prétexte pour ne rien faire. La Polycritique, 1968 ii Contents Preface v Abbreviations vi Introduction 1 1. The Weakness of the Barcelonan Bourgeoisie 11 2. Anarchosyndicalist Ideology 25 3. The CNT in Barcelona 41 4. An Overview of the Revolution in Barcelona 59 5. Rationalization 77 6. Workers' Resistance 97 7. The End of the Spanish Revolution in Barcelona 117 8. The Strength of the Parisian Bourgeoisie 125 9. The Ideology of Workers' Control 137 10. Factory Occupations 153 11. Revolts Against Work 167 12. The Problems of Unemployment and Leisure 193 13. The End of the Popular Front 209 14. Conclusion 225 Abbreviations Used in Notes 229 Primary Sources 230 iii iv Preface This comparative social and political history of the Spanish Revolution in Barcelona and the Popular Front in Paris attempts to show the potency of revolutionary ideologies in Spain, a country with a weak bourgeoisie, and their decline in France, a nation in which capitalists developed modern industries. It investigates how workers in Paris and Barcelona labored during the Popular Fronts, when organizations that claimed to represent the working class held varying degrees of power. The patterns of working-class actions (and inaction) lead this study to question the dominant paradigms of Anglo-American labor historiography. The book began as a doctoral dissertation supervised by Professor Arthur Mitzman of the University of Amsterdam; it benefited from extensive research in Paris, Barcelona, and Salamanca in the early 1980s. In Paris, I was assisted by both friends and scholars. I owe much to Sylviane Lavergne, Véronique and Jean-Pierre Bachimont, Arthur Marchadier, Louis Chevalier, and Michelle Perrot. In Barcelona, Joaquín Sirera and Horacio Capel provided knowledge and comfort. Stanley Payne directed me to the incredibly rich but disorganized civil war archives at Salamanca, and Raymond Carr provided needed encouragement. The manuscript has also benefited from the criticisms and suggestions of Traian Stoianovich, John Gillis, Victoria de Grazia, Allen Howard, and Mark Wasserman. The comments of Robert Seidman have anglicized occasionally hispanic and gallic idioms. v Abbreviations Spain CEDA Confederación española de derechas autónomas CENU Consejo de la escuela nueva unificada CNT Confederación nacional de trabajo FAI Federación anarquista ibérica JSU Juventudes socialistas unificadas MZA Madrid–Zaragoza–Alicante POUM Partido obrero de unificación marxista PSUC Partit socialista unificat de Catalunya SEUC Serveis elèctrics unificats de Catalunya UGT Unión general de trabajadores France CFTC Confédération générale des travailleurs chrétiens CGPF Confédération générale de la production française CGT Confédération générale du travail CGTSR Confédération générale du travail syndicaliste révolutionnaire CGTU Confédération générale du travail unitaire GIM Groupement des industries métallurgiques GR Gauche révolutionnaire HBM Habitations à bon marché PCF Parti communiste français PPF Parti populaire français PSF Parti social français PSOP Parti socialiste ouvrier et paysan SACIAT Syndicat et amicale des chefs de service, ingénieurs, agents de maîtrise et techniciens des industries métallurgiques, mécaniques et connexes SFIO Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière SIMCA Société industrielle de mécanique et de carrosserie automobile vi SNCAN Société nationale de constructions aéronautiques du nord SNCASE Société nationale de constructions aéronautiques du sud-est SNCASO Société nationale de constructions aéronautiques du sud-ouest SNCF Société nationale des chemins de fer français SNCM Société nationale de constructions de moteurs vii Introduction At the outbreak of the Spanish Revolution in Barcelona in 1936, anarchosyndicalist militants and other revolutionaries quickly expropriated the cars and trucks in the city, painted the initials of their organizations on them, and drove around Barcelona at dangerously high speeds. Inexperienced drivers who disregarded traffic laws, these militants caused numerous accidents; their daily newspaper, Solidaridad Obrera, called them to order and asked them to drive safely and return the vehicles to the proper authorities. Their actions foreshadowed the era of the automobile in Spain. During the Popular Front in France at almost the same time, on the occasion of their first annual paid vacations, masses of workers abandoned Paris for the overcrowded Riviera and other specialized areas for leisure. The compulsive exit of summer vacationers in 1936 inaugurated the era of mass tourism and the weekend in France. At first glance, it may seem odd to treat disparate events from such different countries within a single work. After all, one does not have to agree with Napoleon (“Africa starts beyond the Pyrenees”) to appreciate the vast differences between France and Spain. Even during the ancien régime, political, economic, religious, and social developments separated those north of the Pyrenees from the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula. The great movements of early modern European history—the Reformation and absolutism—had a much greater impact in France than in its Iberian neighbor. For centuries before the Revolution, France possessed relatively dynamic urban and rural sectors and a modernizing state, while Spain lagged economically, politically, and culturally. In the eighteenth century, French philosophes authored an original and powerful critique of the Church, nobility, and traditional economy. In Spain, the Enlightenment was derivative and less potent. The advent and effects of the French Revolution further accentuated the differences between the two nations. Proclaiming a program for the future, the new nation opened its ranks to the talented, including Protestants and Jews, and subordinated the clergy to the state. In the Enlightenment tradition the Revolution valued the producer more than the “parasitic” noble or priest. Having developed a much healthier agrarian economy than Spain, France in the twentieth century, unlike its neighbor, possessed no great mass of peasants thirsting for land or jobs. Growing French industry was able to employ not only French laborers from the countryside but also foreigners, including thousands of Spaniards. At the beginning of this century, France separated Church from state and subordinated military to civilian government. Furthermore, the relatively stable Third Republic (1870– 1940) forged a new national unity that gradually weakened regionalist and centrifugal forces and largely disarmed violent revolutionary and counterrevolutionary movements. Spain never experienced a comparable bourgeois revolution. Indeed, in the Napoleonic period large numbers of Spaniards fought a bloody guerrilla against the French invaders and their revolutionary principles. This reaction to French rule in 1808 has been seen as the starting point for modern Spanish history just as the Revolution of 1789 has been viewed as the beginning of modern France. Even after the revolutionary era, traditionalist Spanish landowners, backed by the clergy, maintained their economic and social dominance in large regions of the peninsula well into the twentieth century. Unlike France, the Spanish nation never integrated Protestants and Jews, and large numbers of Spain’s most dynamic people emigrated. Except perhaps in the Basque country and Catalonia, no class of energetic industrialists ever emerged. Yet even in the latter region, as shall be seen, entrepreneurial dynamism was ephemeral. National unity was never fully consolidated, and regionalist movements grew during the Restoration monarchy (1874–1931) in the wealthiest areas of the peninsula. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, armed confrontation between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces encouraged the pronunciamiento—direct military intervention in politics. 1 The Second Republic (1931–1939) proved unable to secure the separation of military from civilian government and Church from state. Precisely because of these dissimilar developments, a comparative approach can aid our understanding of the history of both nations and deepen our comprehension of two concurrent events in twentieth- century European history: the Spanish Revolution and the French Popular Front. The historiography of both events has been dominated by a political or diplomatic perspective within each country’s national history. Historians have not yet attempted a socially oriented comparative approach but have for the most part concentrated on party platforms, conflicting ideologies, governmental changes, and—in the case of the Spanish Revolution—military battles. Yet a comparative social history of the developments leading up to the Spanish Revolution and the French Popular Front and a social history of the events themselves can profoundly enhance our comprehension of the political, diplomatic, and even military histories of both phenomena. The comparative social approach has its limits and cannot entirely resolve the problems of causality. One cannot prove that a Spanish “working-class” revolution was inevitable since Spain did not follow the French model. Nonetheless, a review of some of the major social, economic, and political differences between the two nations can illuminate why revolutionaries