Gaston Leval Collectives in the Spanish revolution Detailed account of worker-controlled agriculture, industry and public services in revolutionary Spain during the civil war. Part 1: Preamble . Part 2: Agrarian socialisation . Part 3: Industry and public services . Part 4: Towns and isolated achievements . Part 5: Parties and government . Part 6: Final reflections Part 1: Preamble I: The Ideal II: The Men and the Struggles III: Material for a Revolution IV: A Revolutionary Situation CHAPTER 1 THE IDEAL "Now I can die, I have seen my ideal realised." This was said to me in one of the Levante collectives, if my memory servers me well, by one of the men who had struggled throughout their lives for the triumph of social justice, human liberty and brotherhood. His idea was libertarian communism, or anarchy. But the use of this work carried with it the risk in all languages of distorting in people's minds what the great savant and humanist, Elise» Reclus, defined as the "noblest conception of order." More especially because very often, and it was the case in France, the anarchists seems to have done their utmost to agree with their enemies, and to justify to negative and nihilistic interpretation which one already finds in such and such and order or edict of Philip the Fair in France. It is therefore to betray the meaning of what the old militant, who had struggled to long and had suffered so much, and who probably was shot by one of Franco's firing squads, was saying to me, thus to stick to the simple expression of a word so widely interpreted. Let us therefore look into the matter more deeply. In his pamphlet "El Ideal Anarquista," Ricardo Mella, who was the most genuine and original thinker of Spanish anarchism, gave the following definition of this ideal: "liberty as the basis, equality as the means, fraternity as the ends." Let us bear this well in mind: the ultimate goal, the crowning glory was fraternity, in which freedom would be at the same time both a basis and a consequence, for can there be fraternity without liberty; but equally can one deprive one's brother of liberty? Besides, these concepts had not penetrated in Spain with the much debated and debatable word anarchy. In his Book El Proletariado Militante, to which one must constantly return, Anselmo Lorenzo, who after Mella was the most qualified thinker among Spanish anarchists, recounts how these ideas had been revealed to him, first by reading some of Proudhon's books before 1870, among them De La Capacit» Politique des Classes OuvriÀres which had been translated by Pi y Margall. (1) These books, and the articles published by Pi y Margall himself in his journal La Discusion had been demonstrated to him the reality of the social problem, whereas other men were struggling for a republic which could not be other than bourgeois, and they affiliated themselves with the Carbonaro movement or with some other European secret society. It was at this time that the Bakuninist influence penetrated into Spain. Its bearer was a distinguished fighter, the Italian Giuseppe Fanelli, a former Garibaldian combatant, later an Independent Liberal Deputy, who have met Bakunin, presumably at the time of his stay in Florence, was to subscribe to his social ideas. Bakunin defended and propagated Socialism. At that time, the word anarchy was for him synonymous with disorder, chaos, delinquency. He also founded in Geneva, with friends, including some intellectuals of the first order, (2) the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy. He was known Proudhon during his stay in Paris, during the years 1844-48. (3) As with Proudhon, Bakunin's socialism was anti- statist. It satisfied his Slavonic psychology, his generous Russian nature, his cosmic view of things, and the broad human philosophy based on experimental science which he constructed for himself. His thought matured during the twelve years he spend in detention in the fortress, in prison and in Siberian deportation. The behaviour of the authoritarian and dictatorial Marx during this long and painful period only strengthened his suspicion and aversion to dictatorship, even when called popular. So, when in 1869, Fanelli expounded the doctrine of the Alliance to the new friends he had made in Madrid and in Barcelona, he was able to refer to the seven articles of the programme of that secret organisation, written in the hand of its founder: "The Alliance declares itself atheistic; it demands the political, economic, and social equality of members of both sexes." "The land, working tools, as well as all wealth, by becoming the collective property of the whole of society, cannot be used other than by the workers, that is to say by the agricultural and industrial associations." "It demands for all children of both sexes, from the moment they are born, equality of the means for development, that is to say maintenance and education to all levels in science, industry and the arts." "It recognises that all political and authoritarian states that exist now will have to be submerged in the universal union of free federations both agricultural and industrial." "It not being possible to find a definitive and real solution to the social question, other than on the basis of the international solidarity of workers of all countries, the Alliance rejects all politics based on so-called patriotism and on the rivalries between nations." "It demands the universal association of all local associations through freedom." In this programme Bakunin went further than Proudhon, for example, on women's equality of rights"he had already done so, among others in his Revolutionary Catechism; he went further than Marx in his vision of a new society constructed on an international basis of workers' economic organisation. For the Statutes of the International don't go so far, they do not imply a clear technique of social reorganisation at the same time as a political doctrine (which was to leave the way open to many surprises and lead to the capture of Parliament and of the State). But it is surprising to see with what alacrity and ease, with what precision, the two nuclei " in Madrid and Barcelona " assimilated and spread the fundamental doctrine of the Alliance. For, a year later, on June 19, 1870, the first congress of the Spanish section of the First International was held in Barcelona at the Teatro Circo Barcelon»s. That congress, at which 40,000 workers were represented out of population of 18 million inhabitants, was characterised by the seriousness and profundity of the discussion, the problems studied and the resolutions passed. The need to have done with the domination of capital and the exploitation of man by man; the establishment of a tactic which belonged to the working class independently of the political parties; the need to prepare oneself to take over from the bourgeois society through the workers' associations, was developed at length. And from the beginning the ways of applying the ideal called for the elaboration of directives which one finds in the revolution relative to the organisation of the workers: 1. In every locality workers of each trade will be organised in socialised sections; in addition a general section will be established which will include all workers engaged in trades that are not yet included in special sections: it will be a section of different trades. 2. All sections of trades from the same locality will federate and organise a solidary cooperation applied also to matters of mutual aid, education, (4) etc., which are of great interest to the workers. 3. Section of the same trade belonging to different localities will federate to constitute resistance and solidarity within their occupation. 4. Local federations will federate to constitute the Spanish Regional Federation which will be represented by a Federal Council elected by the congresses. 5. All the trade sections, local federations, trade federations, as well as the Regional Federation will govern themselves on the basis of their own rules worked out at their congresses. 6. All the workers represented by the workers' congresses will decide, through the intermediary of their delegates, as to the methods of action and development of our organisation. Certainly the fundamental postulates of the idea were the work of Bakunin and were brought there by Fanelli. But here one finds a vast organisational concept and a creative initiative going beyond all that had hitherto been done in Europe, indicating to what a degree the idea was understood and assimilated. In this complex and complete structure principles guided action, but the action to follow was to guide and complement the principles. On the other hand we find ourselves confronted by an innovatory spirit, an active will and an ethical sense, which in one bound went beyond the limits of syndical corporatism. One was not only thinking of creating an organisation with a professional character but one that was also humanist and social in the broad sense of the word. Even while an effective weapon of struggle for the immediate future against the class enemy was being forged, the foundations were being laid of a new society. Already, what later was to be called the vertical organisation constituted on the basis of national federations, completes the horizontal organisation. At the same time, the local federations set up in the somewhat less important centres, where different craft unions existed, bring together and federate the latter for common struggles. In France, this happened thirty years later in the form of the bourses de travail (labour exchanges) and to achieve this it was necessary that Fernand Pelloutier, who came from the petite bourgeoisie, should become its advocate.