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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 serves me well, by one of the men who had struggled throughout their lives for the triumph of social justice, economic equality, and for human liberty and brotherhood.
His ideal was libertarian communism, or anarchy. But the use of this latter word carries with it the risk in all languages of distorting in people's minds what the great savant and humanist, Elisée Reclus, defined as "the noblest concept of order". More especially because very often, and it was the case in France, the anarchists seem to have done their utmost to agree with their enemies, and to justify the negative and nihilistic interpretation which one already finds in such and such an order or edict of Philip the Fair in France. It is therefore to betray the meaning of what the old militant, who had struggled so 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 into Spain with the much debated and debatable word anarchy. In his book El Proletariado Militante, to which one must continually 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 Capacité Politique des Classes Ouvrières which had been translated by Pi y Margall. These books, and the articles published by Pi y Margall himself in his journal La Discusíon had 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 that 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 having 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, the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy. He had known Proudhon during his stay in Paris, during the years 1844–1848. As with Proudhon, Bakunin's socialism was antistatist. 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 spent 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 recognizes 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 policies 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 organisations. 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 Barcelonés.
That congress, at which 40,000 workers were represented out of a population of 18 million inhabitants, was characterised by the seriousness and profundity of the discussions, 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 resolution relative to the organisation of the workers:
"1. In every locality workers of each trade will be organised in specialised 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, etc., which are of great interest to the workers.
"3. Sections 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 ideal 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 ideal 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.
But the ideal also appears in other resolutions that were adopted, and other tasks are envisaged for the immediate future — though often the bitterness of the social struggle prevented the application of the decisions reached. At that same congress, the question of cooperatives was also taken up. For men who envisaged the radical transformation of society in a very short time, the cooperatives might have appeared as a dangerous setback. But though they still did not know of the programme of the Rochdale Pioneers, the worker delegates at the Barcelona congress found commonsense and well balanced solutions to this problem. Paragraph 3 of the resolution on which they had voted stipulated that:
"When circumstances demand it, cooperation in production must favour the production of goods for immediate consumption by the workers, but we take it to task when it does not extend, in fact, its solidarity to the large workers' organisations."
Nevertheless, the principle of universal solidarity, extended to all the exploited seems specially practicable through consumer cooperation, "the only one which not only can be applied in all cases and in all circumstances, but which must also provide the rudiments and the means for the general development of all those workers whose cultural backwardness makes new ideas difficult to comprehend".
Finally, the sixth and last paragraph stipulates that "alongside consumer cooperatism and complementary to it, one can place cooperatives for mutual aid and public instruction" (my italics).
One must point out that we are talking about June, 1870. At that time Marx's book Das Kapital was still unknown as was the Communist Manifesto, and the Paris Commune was not to explode until the following year. Federalist and libertarian socialism in Spain was therefore to develop by the impulse of its own strength. In one stroke, the ideal was stated in general terms and what was later to be called French revolutionary syndicalism was formulated after that period.
But what was elaborated in those historic days was to be added to in the congresses that followed in the next decade. Thus in the following year the conference of the organisation comprising the "Spanish Regional Section of the First International" goes further in clarifying these questions. The most able of the militants had been to Switzerland to establish contact with Bakunin who inspired their action thanks to a constructive mind and to organisational gifts embracing life on a world scale. But they added their own ideas to his. In the interests of the immediate struggle, of working class resistance and for the organisation of the new society, Spain was organically divided into five regions by the delegates: North, South, East, West and Central. As had been decided the previous year, the local and national trades federations were founded. A form of cooperation, also by trades, was outlined in order to be able to facilitate and to control this part of general activity. On September 1, 1871, after a week of discussions on various subjects, a declaration of principles against republicanism as the political, but not social, enemy of the monarchical regime was approved:
"Seeing that the true meaning of the word 'Republic' is 'the public thing', that is what belongs to the collectivity and involves the collective property;
"That 'democracy' means the free exercise of individual rights, which is not practicable except under Anarchy, that is to say by the abolition of the political and juridical States in the place of which it will be necessary to constitute workers' States the functions of which will be simply economic;
"That man's rights cannot be subjected to laws for they are indefeasible and unalienable;
"That in consequence the Federation must simply have an economic character;
"The Conference of the workers of the Spanish region of the Workers International gathered in Valencia declares: "That the true democratic and federal republic is the collective property, Anarchy and the economic Federation, that is to say the free universal federation of free associations of agricultural and industrial workers, formula which it adopts in its entirety."
One cannot but admire the richness of this thinking, which has never been improved on by any working class movement since it was first formulated. It took the French working class movement thirty-five years to get as far as the Amiens Charter, which is far inferior both in its theoretical and doctrinal content, in the breadth of the constructive horizons on the practical side, as well as in that sense of universality and internationalism which raises spirits and guides actions. Here, the basic inspiration is in the first place an ideal of brotherhood. It is above all a question of extending to all the peoples, to all the inhabitants of the world, the practice of human solidarity.
In the following year — 1872 — the International was declared illegal by the Madrid government in spite of its brilliant defence made in the Cortes by Nicolas Salmeron, a noble figure and eminent republican jurist. In Italy the government was to take the same steps. In France, where the Le Chapelier law still prevailed, courts continued to condemn Internationalists to heavy terms of imprisonment. But whereas the Italian Internationalists, guided by Malatesta, Covelli, Andrea Costa, Carlo Cafiero and other young enthusiasts from the bourgeoisie, welcomed this measure which they believed would hasten the revolution, and launched out in wild insurrectional attempts which provoked the complete dissolution of the movement, the Spanish militants did not lose sight of the objectives of a constructive nature and of the immediate organic action which stems from it. They began by confirming the positive aspirations in a Manifesto addressed to public opinion by the Federal Council of the Spanish Section of the First International:
"We want justice to be achieved in all human relations;
"We want the abolition of all social classes and their fusion into a single class of free, honest and cultured producers;
"We want work to be the basis on which society rests; that the world be converted into one immense federation of free working class local collectives which, by federating among themselves, will constitute a completely autonomous local federation; that the local federations in one canton will constitute the cantonal federation, that the various cantonal federations in a region will constitute the regional federation and finally that all the regional federations of the world will constitute the large international federation.
"We want the instruments of work, the land, the mines, the shipyards, the merchant navy, the railways, factories, machines, etc. ... having become the property of the whole of society, should not be utilised except by the workers Collectives who will make them produce directly and within which the worker will receive the full produce of his work; "We want for all individuals of both sexes a complete education in science, industry and the Arts so that intellectual inequalities, almost entirely imaginary, will disappear, and that the distinctive effects of the division of labour should not recur; one will then secure the unique, but positive, advantages from that economic force by the production of that which is destined to satisfy human needs;
"We believe that by the organisation of society in a vast federation of workers Collectives based on work, all authoritarian powers will disappear, converting themselves into simple administrators of the collective interests, and that the spirit of nationality and patriotism, so antagonistic to union and solidarity among men, will be obliterated before the great fatherland of work, which is the whole world.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Collectives in the Spanish Revolution"
by .
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