An Anarchist FAQ (AFAQ) is now at version 15.6. This release is a revision of the appendix refuting the various Leninist accounts of the Spanish Anarchist movement and key episodes in its history..
Marxists and Spanish Anarchism
1. Were the Spanish Anarchists "Primitive Rebels"?
2. How accurate is Felix Morrow's book on the Spanish Revolution?
3. Did a "highly centralised" FAI control the CNT?
4. What is the history of the CNT and the Communist International?
5. Why did the CNT not join the Workers' Alliance?
6. Was the October 1934 revolt sabotaged by the CNT?
7. Were the Friends of Durruti Marxists?
8. Did the Friends of Durruti "break with" anarchism?
9. Were the Friends of Durruti influenced by Trotskyists?
10. What does the Friends of Durruti's programme tell us about Trotskyism?
11. Why is Morrow's comments against the militarisation of the militias ironic?
12. What is ironic about Morrow's vision of revolution?
13. Why do anarchists reject the Marxist "workers' state"?
14. What is wrong with Morrow's "fundamental tenet" of anarchism?
15. Did Spanish Anarchism aim for the creation of "collectives" before the revolution?
16. How does the development of the collectives indicate the differences between Bolshevism and anarchism?
17. Why is Morrow's support for "proletarian methods of production" ironic?
18. Were the federations of collectives an "abandonment" of anarchist ideas?
19. Did the experience of the rural collectives refute anarchism?
20. Does the experience of the Spanish Revolution indicate the failure of anarchism or the failure of anarchists?
This appendix can be considered as a supplement to section I.8 ("Does revolutionary Spain show that libertarian socialism can work in practice?") of the main AFAQ. Given the clear ignorance of anarchism in the Leninist accounts we are debunking, it can also be considered a supplement to section H.2 ("What parts of anarchism do Marxists particularly misrepresent?") as well.
We seek to refute the most significant works which cloud how anarchism in Spain is understood, namely Stalinist historian Eric Hobsbawm's Primitive Rebels and Trotskyist Felix Morrow's Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain. Both share an ignorance about anarchist theory which is simply shocking and this misinforms their accounts of Spanish anarchism. However, we do address other, less significant, Marxist accounts of Spanish anarchism or the 1936 social revolution if they raise distortions which are more commonplace. Given this, it is a long appendix for the obvious reason that while it takes only a few words to create a distortion about anarchism (or anything else), debunking such nonsense can be time consuming as it requires providing evidence to show it is not a case of assertions being made against assertions. This is even more necessary when the nonsense is repeated by those party hacks who think regurgitating what other Marxists have written about anarchism is sufficient.
As well as distortions and ignorance about anarchism, there is also issues of ommission in these Marxist accounts. This is seen in Morrow's book, which praises -- for example -- the workers' militias and the "proletarian methods of production" in the collectives organised by the CNT. This, of course, implies that Trotskyism supports these things yet Morrow fails to mention that Trotsky abolished these very things when he held power. So if Bolshevism is these things then, ironically, Russia under the Bolsheviks was a place in which Bolshevism did not exist. Irish Anarchist Jack White put it well after the May Days of 1937:
"Mr. Emile Burns, in his book Communism, Capitalism, and the Transition, has put the matter in a nutshell, not only as regards what should happen in theory but what did actually happen in the Russian Revolution. He might have been writing of the revolution that the simple Spanish 'Trotskyites' thought they were defending. 'All executive positions,' writes Mr. Burns, 'which had formerly been filled by appointment from above had to be made elective and the elected persons had to be subject to recall at any moment by the bodies that elected them; therefore from the first day of the revolution the command of armed forces was taken over by elected deputies; the factory workers were armed and fought all the most vital battles; the officials in State Departments were replaced by workers; the managers in the factories were replaced or controlled by councils of workers; the existing Law Courts were abolished and Workers’ Courts with elected judges took their place; wherever Soviet order was established, elected workers’ Committees took the place of appointed officials.'
"Now that is precisely the kind of order that the Spanish 'Trotskyites', in common with other Spanish 'uncontrollables', thought they were fighting to preserve and maintain from May 2nd to 7th in Barcelona.
"But I would hate to be thought a 'Trotskyite', for I remember it was Trotsky who helped to smash all that sort of thing at Kronstadt. So I must perforce be an 'uncontrollable.' . . . And an 'uncontrollable' is an Anarchist who has stuck to Anarchy and who is not, therefore, primarily concerned with the shades or strata of Capitalism, but with revolution by direct action . . ." ["The Meaning of Anarchism", A Libertarian Reader, vol. 3, Iain McKay (ed.), pp. 43-5]
Thus these Marxist accounts of Spanish anarchism give a false impression of both Anarchism and Marxism. Morrow, as we show, fails to present an accurate account of the reality of both Bolshevik practice and theory during the Russian Revolution.
It should go without saying that the Spanish anarchist movement was not perfect and it made its mistakes but the aim of this appendix is simply to ensure that it gets criticised accurately so that we can learn from both its positive and negative aspects. The importance of the Spanish anarchist movement is not only shows that libertarian socialism can work (as seen in the social revolution of July 1936) but also the validity of anarchist views of the labour movement. As Kropotkin summarised in his justly famous entry on "Anarchism" included in the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"In virtue of the above principles the anarchists refuse to be party to the present State organisation and to support it by infusing fresh blood into it. They do not seek to constitute, and invite the working men not to constitute, political parties in the parliaments. Accordingly, since the foundation of the International Working Men’s Association in 1864–1866, they have endeavoured to promote their ideas directly amongst the labour organisations and to induce those unions to a direct struggle against capital, without placing their faith in parliamentary legislation." [Direct Struggle Against Capital, p. 165]
In the International, Bakunin had correctly warned that if workers voted for a labour party, the "worker deputies, transferred into bourgeois surroundings and an atmosphere of entirely bourgeois political ideas, ceasing in fact to be workers by becoming Statesmen, will become bourgeois, and perhaps even more bourgeois than the bourgeois themselves. For men do not make situations, on the contrary it is situations that make men." [A Libertarian Reader, vol. 1, Iain McKay (ed.), p. 162] Thus "the election to the German parliament of one or two workers" was "not dangerous." In fact, it was "highly useful to the German state as a lightning-rod, or a safety-valve." Unlike the "political and social theory" of the anarchists, which "leads them directly and inexorably to a complete break with all governments and all forms of bourgeois politics, leaving no alternative but social revolution," Marxism "inexorably enmeshes and entangles its adherents, under the pretext of political tactics, in endless accommodation with governments and the various bourgeois political parties -- that is, it thrusts them directly into reaction." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 193 and pp. 179-80] The rise of reformism in German Social Democracy, its support for its ruling class during the First World War and its crushing of the German Revolution confirmed this prediction.
His alternative was to build workers organisations: "there remains to it only a single path, that of its emancipation through practice . . . that of the struggle of the workers in solidarity against the bosses. It is trades unions, organisation and the federation of resistance funds." [A Libertarian Reader, vol. 1, Iain McKay (ed.), p. 155] In summary:
"Workers, no longer count on anyone but yourselves. Do not demoralise and paralyse your rising power in foolish alliances with bourgeois radicalism . . . Abstain from all participation in bourgeois radicalism and organise outside of it the forces of the proletariat. The basis of that organisation is entirely given: It is the workshops and the federation of the workshops; the creation of resistance funds, instruments of struggle against the bourgeoisie, and their federation not just nationally, but internationally. The creation of chambers of labour . . . when the hour of the revolution sounds, the liquidation of the State and of bourgeois society . . . Anarchy, that it to say the true, the open popular revolution . . . and economic organisation, from top to bottom and from the circumference to the centre, of the triumphant world of the workers. [Op. Cit., pp. 181-4]
This was the path followed by the Spanish Anarchists from the 1870s onwards and which Kropotkin recommended to French workers: "Faithful to the anarchist traditions of the International, clever, active, energetic men . . . remain within the working class, they struggle with it, for it. They bring the contribution of their energy to the workers’ organisation and work to build up a force that will crush capital, come the day of revolution: the revolutionary trades association." [Direct Struggle Against Capital, p. 299] The correctness of this can be seen in this appendix -- and even the Stalinist hack Eric Hobsbawm admitted "the remarkable achievement of Spanish anarchism which was to create a working-class movement that remained genuinely revolutionary. Social democratic and . . . even communist trade unions have rarely been able to escape either schizophrenia [i.e., revolutionary rhetoric hiding reformist practice] or betrayal of their socialist convictions." [Revolutionaries, p. 104] Needless to say, he preferred schizophrenia and betrayal rather than reject Marxism but we hope our readers will base their ideas on the evidence of history and learn from it while pursuing social change today.
Finally, the aim is still to complete and revise all the appendices -- but when is still a moot-point. Particularly as much of what the one on the Russian Revolution covers is already discussed in section H. However, there is still a lot of material to go through and as these are appendices, the necessity is not as pressing as the main body of AFAQ. The plan is to revise the existing appendices before turning to the one which remains incomplete. We will also be supplementing this work with posting to the An Anarchist FAQ blog on specific issues within anarchist theory, history or current events.