Augustin Souchy and Paul Folgare Collectivizations: the Constructive Achievements of the Spanish Revolution

Augustin Souchy and Paul Folgare Collectivizations: The constructive achievements of the Spanish Revolution. Essays, documents and reports Table of contents: Part 1 - The New Collective Economy Part 2 - Collective Labor in the Various Sectors of the Economy Part 3 - Collective Labor in the Provinces of Catalonia Part 4 - Libertarian Communism Collectivizations: The Constructive Achievements of the Spanish Revolution. Essays, Documents and Reports— Agustin Souchy and Paul Folgare1 Publisher’s Note from the Spanish Edition of 1977 This work, which comprises one of the main sources that must be referred to for any analysis of the collectivizations that took place during the Spanish Revolution, was first published by “Tierra y Libertad” in Barcelona in 1937. After the Civil War it was republished in Toulouse by the CNT, in an edition that omitted the authors’ names. The mere fact that the first edition of this book was published in 1937 will be enough to alert the reader to the existence of certain very general limitations imposed on the interpretation of the text. On the one hand, it was written during the critical moments of the Revolution, and vividly reflects one of the Revolution’s most important features; on the other hand, this very fact explains the optimistic tone and the apologetic character of the work, whose shortcomings include the scarcity or absence of criticisms of the collectivization process (a trait that also reflects the obvious didactic and propagandistic purposes of the authors). The positive aspects of the collectivizations, however, far outweigh the negative ones; this book presents a magnificent tableau of revolutionary achievements, and highlights, perhaps more clearly than the vast majority of literature addressing this theme, the interaction between the spontaneous elements of collectivization and the conscious elements of their creation, which were primarily led by the CNT. The authors, the German anarchists Souchy and Folgare (actually, according to Frank Mintz, the latter name should be spelled Polgare), crafted the book on the basis of a kind of “collage” technique, mixing, as the second subtitle indicates, “essays, documents and reports”. The purpose of this technique is obviously to allow, to the greatest possible extent, by way of documents, proclamations and interviews, the collectivist workers to express themselves in the book. The authors’ role is reduced to a labor of ordering and the minimum amount of editing necessary to confer coherence upon the mass of materials they selected. This mixture of materials introduces certain structural complications in the reading of the text, so that it is sometimes difficult, for example, to distinguish between the text written by the authors and the text consisting of the reproduction of documents or the transcription of oral accounts. Although the edition published by “Tierra y Libertad” represented a notable effort to resolve this difficulty, in the present edition we have endeavored to enhance the structural clarity of the book, especially by means of the standardization of the styles utilized for the chapter headings, subtitles, sections, etc. We have strictly adhered to the text of the first edition of 1937. The changes that, without modifying the actual text, we have thought advisable, are as follows: Rectification of obvious typographical errors, including various sporadic inconsistencies in internal references. Orthographical modernization in accordance with current norms. Changing certain initials of numerous names from the upper case to the lower case, although we preserved the upper case usage wherever it was minimally admissible. We have not eliminated the quite numerous solecisms; only in rare cases, and when it was strongly advisable, have we changed an incorrect word and inserted the correct one, but have on such occasions noted the change in a footnote; on other occasions, we have preserved the incorrect word from the original text, and have inserted a footnote in which we have suggested the word we think is the correct one. Almost always, however, the context makes the meaning of the words that are incorrectly used clear enough to make any such clarification unnecessary. The punctuation in the text, although often dubious, has been nonetheless preserved as it is in the original, as it does not in any case prejudice a correct understanding of the text. Introduction Workers all over the world have understood that the Spanish struggle is their struggle, too. The obstinate silence of the entire bourgeois press, as well as all the resulting difficulties and the scarce media outlets possessed by the Spanish revolutionaries, on the one hand, and the persecution, the cover-up, and the prohibition of their dissemination of information by the enemies of the working class, on the other hand, have generally prevented the workers from obtaining a veracious account of the revolutionary achievements of the libertarian movement in Spain. Nonetheless, this has not prevented them from expressing all their sympathies for them. Meanwhile we have deemed it useful and necessary to provide an account, for all those who have long felt sympathy for and acted in support of the freedom fighters, of this labor of liberation that was carried out in the rearguard. It seemed to us that we would best serve this informational purpose by letting the Spanish revolutionaries speak for themselves as much as possible. The summary that we present here contains, besides some brief schematic explanations (added only in order to provide a more complete picture), original documents, for the most part: confiscation decrees, reports of the trade unions, minutes of meetings, statutes, etc., and the reports drafted by the Industrial committees and by the various local committees for the organs of the revolutionary movement. Nor have we thought it necessary to change either the style or the content of these documents. Through them the Spanish Revolution speaks, the action of the proletariat as it was expressed at the time, and the quite simple pathos of some of these declarations from those memorable days of struggle provides a better depiction of the events to the foreign reader than the most precise statistics or the most profound analyses. You will not find within this book either falsifying praise, or distorting exaggerations. We have simply let the Spanish worker speak for himself so he can tell the entire world what he has done to vindicate and defend his liberty and his well-being. Part 1 The New Collective Economy 1. Collectivization in Spain I The military revolt of July 19, 1936 had wide-ranging consequences for the economic life of Spain. Defense against the militarists and the clergy was only possible with the help of the proletariat. Alone, the republican bourgeoisie would have succumbed. It had to align itself with the proletariat. In 1934, when the Catalonian left sought to challenge Madrid without the workers, and against the anarchists and the syndicalists, Madrid was victorious. The advocates of Catalonian autonomy were defeated. After this conquest, Madrid exacted its vengeance. The Catalonian politicians, beginning with Companys, were sentenced to years in prison. If the petty bourgeoisie did not want to expose itself this time to the same danger, it had to join forces with the anarchists and syndicalists. This alliance could not be limited to the political terrain. The anarchists and syndicalists had bad experiences with the bourgeois republic. It was not to be assumed that they would be content to serve as a barrier against the clerical-militarist coup. It was assumed that they would embark on a transformation of the economic system. They did not want to allow economic exploitation to persist, which they perceived to be the cause of political oppression. The clergy, the military camarilla and the big capitalists allied with them, were aware of this. They knew quite well what was at stake. The victory of the military would have meant the establishment of a military dictatorship, an exacerbated version of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Had this taken place, not only would the privileged classes have saved themselves, but they would also have provided themselves with the opportunity to exploit the workers even more intensively in the future. This is why they supported the military conspirators. The generals were the active agents, while the big capitalists pulled the strings behind the scenes. They did not show their hand. To some extent, they were not even at the site of the events. Juan March, Francisco Cambó and others from their class were not even in Spain at the outbreak of the uprising. They awaited the development of events from other countries. If the military was victorious, these financiers would have returned. In Catalonia, however, as in more than half of Spain, the coup d’état failed. The capitalist financiers did not return to Spain. Similarly, the captains of industry, the factory directors and the managers of major enterprises preferred to wait outside Spain for the armed struggle to come to an end. On July 19, and during the following days, all the major businesses were abandoned by their managers. The directors of the railroads, of the transportation network in the cities, of the shipping companies, of the major textile mills and forges, the leaders and delegates of the employers’ associations, had all disappeared. The general strike of the workers, a defensive measure employed against the military coup d’état, completely paralyzed economic life for eight days. After having annihilated the resistance of the military rebels, the proletarian organizations decided to go back to work. The trade unions of the CNT were soon convinced that work could not resume under the same conditions as before. The general strike was not a wage struggle. There were no negotiations about a shorter working day or better working conditions. There were no employers. The workers not only had to resume work at their lathes, their locomotives, trolleys and offices; they also had to take over control of the factories, the workshops, and the transport networks.

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