#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #INTERNATIONAL #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) anarkismo.net: From libertarian communism to corporate socialism by Miguel G. Gómez - Embat

 A tour of the CNT positions during the Civil War ---- Alasbarricadas - We echo

this historical review on the various positions that the CNT-FAI took along the
Spanish Revolution. It is not usually easy to understand the complexity of a
historical moment in which so many things were happening at the same time. We
consider basic to understand the tactical ups and downs of any revolutionary
movement in a historical moment in order to be able to learn something for our
future struggles. ---- The article is not an academic one, but it sheds light on
some little-known facts about how the CNT navigated 1938, in terms of tactics and
strategy. This period has usually been completely erased, automatically branded
as obscure, shameful, claudicating or bureaucratic without any attempt to
understand what the libertarian organisations were actually doing. It is assumed
that the drift of the war and, as the article says, the pessimism that surrounded
the organisation from mid-1937 onwards, resulted in a shift in the strategic line
of the libertarian movement to approaches as different from libertarian communism
as could be the "trade union state" or corporate socialism.

We know that this article is the tip of the iceberg of a world that cannot be
explained in a struggle of the good guys against the bad guys. Everything is full
of nuances. We miss an explanation on the opposition to this shift. But to have
treated that opposition as it deserves would have diverted the article from
conveniently (and at a manageable length) presenting us the official line of the
Movimiento Libertario Español (MLE) of '37 and '38.

And by the way, even if this history presents us with an unclear evolution
towards bureaucratism and centralism, we are still amazed at with the enormous
capacity of those people who built up our organisations and managed the daily
lives of millions of people. Because, it must be said, when there was supposedly
no social revolution any more, there were still hundreds of thousands of people
living in collectivisations and a large part of industry was still under workers'
control.

In order to give you an insight into the debates and to be able to elaborate
further in-depth studies, https://mega.nz/folder/FwRXkQBS#xk2IN6lpYZmEJYP-IaTW3g.

Miguel G. Gómez (@BlackSpartak)

The aim of this article is to shed light on the political-economic project
followed by the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) during the Spanish Civil
War. We will avoid giving a reading by refering to fetish words such as "betrayal
of principles" or "opportunism", that do not explain the reality of the internal
processes and even less the strategic turns of a mass organisation.

When the CNT came out of the Zaragoza Congress in May 1936 it seemed that the
internal debates on how to apply ideology to the specifity of Spanish reality had
been definitively settled. At this congress the most important thing, on a
theoretical level, was the
https://sindicalismo.org/2021/01/02/concepto-confederal-del-comunismo-libertario/. In
this document an outline was made of what a society governed by anarchist
principles should be like.

The general atmosphere in the spring of 1936 was one of strong social
contestation at all levels and spirits were certainly very high. The possibility
of revolution was by no means a chimera. Anarchist theorists such as
https://www.solidaridadobrera.org/ateneo_nacho/libros/Christiaan%20Cornelissen%20-%20Comunismo%20libertario%20y%20regimen%20de%20transicion.pdf,
https://es.scribd.com/document/383847137/Isaac-Puente-El-Comunismo-Libertario,
http://memorialibertaria.org/content/orob%C3%B3n-fern%C3%A1ndez-valeriano or
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B14Synwe1mHzeEE3aDlFODhHZFU/edit?resourcekey=0-jnTO1rT4IVk5zXcTSX02GA
had been sketching out models of a libertarian communist society for years, but
they did not quite agree among themselves. In Saragossa, a model of libertarian
communism based more on the ideas of Isaac Puente than on those of the others was
advocated.

The general characteristics of the model were the abolition of private property
and the establishment of communes as fundamental elements of the new society. At
the industrial level, each production centre would have a
technical-administrative council appointed in assembly by the company's staff.
They would coordinate with other centres through the federations of industry -
which in 1936 were very little developed. In their description they do not make
clear the role of the trade unions from this point onwards, and it is understood
that they would be dissolved given the achievement of libertarian communism.

Some sectors such as education, transport, construction, among others, would
escape general industrial planning and would be more linked to local or communal
spheres.

The basic point, as has been said, was the commune, which would have to
confederate territorially in an Iberian Confederation of Libertarian Autonomous
Communes. This would be the body that would replace the state at the
administrative level. The communes would be in charge of governing the problems
affecting life in a democratic way, from the bottom up, always taking into
account the interests of those affected.

As for distribution, the Saragossa Congress did not accept the Kropotkinian
concept of "the seizure of the heap". Instead, it opted for a charter of the
producer and the consumer which would have to be managed by the communes by means
of purchasing vouchers. It is worth noting that they did not mention the figure
of the cooperative.

For the time being, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treintism had been silenced. It
accepted this decision of the libertarian trade union movement. They also
supported the proposal of the CNT to initiate a rapprochement with the UGT to
form a trade union alliance of a revolutionary character. For the Opposition
trade unionists (treintistas), the important thing of the Congress was to
reintegrate into the anarcho-syndicalist trade union centre.

All this was the theoretical basis for the Spanish Revolution of 1936. At the
beginning of June there was the great wave of factory occupations in France. It
was thought that the social revolution was going to break out in that country.
But in the end it took place in Spain when the Fascist military uprising was
defeated in much of the country.

The great dilemma facing the Cenetistas in the early days of the war was whether
to seize power, as Joan García Oliver proposed in his "go for everything", or
whether to establish an anti-fascist pact, as Federica Montseny or Mariano
Vázquez proposed. However, the proposal that received most support was that of
Manuel Escorza, which assumed the anti-fascist pact in the public and formal
spheres, while the economy and the militias would remain under workers' control.
In other words, it was decided to carry out the social revolution while
collaborating in the defeat of fascism with others.

This decision was taken because of the difficulty of foreseeing what was going to
happen in other Spanish territories. If in Catalonia the CNT was hegemonic and
had the upper hand, in other areas of the Peninsula (since the islands and north
Africa had come under the control of the fascist rebels) the CNT did not see
itself capable of imposing the libertarian revolution. We say impose, precisely
because that was what García Oliver was proposing, and although they could do it
in Catalonia, it was quite another thing to try to do it in Madrid or Valencia.
Let us also understand that at that time military victory was taken for granted.
It was worth waiting.

So it was the libertarian movement that proposed to the rest of the anti-fascist
forces the creation of a new body called the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist
Militias, which gradually took on other powers beyond the purely military
question, for example, the War Industries Commission. But this body was not a
dual power, it duplicated the existing power, the Generalitat (the catalan
governmnet), without questioning or threatening it. Moreover, the
anarcho-syndicalist movement collaborated with the Generalitat to manage whole
areas of society, such as the economy and education. Thus, in August, both the
Consell d'Economia de Catalunya and the Consell de l'Escola Nova Unificada were
created, both led by personalities from the libertarian movement. In addition,
let's note that the CNT did not formally participate in the Government of the
Generalitat until the Regional Plenum of Trade Unions on 24 September. In other
words, anarcho-syndicalism was participating in (and directing) ministries of the
Generalitat before it formally belonged to the Consell de la Generalitat.

In this first period, the "brief summer of anarchy", there was a multitude of
voluntary expropriations of companies. Many bosses had left the country, because
of their sympathy for the fascists coup plotters and their fear of being arrested
and executed by the masses of workers. When their companies were left without
management, many were simply confiscated. In the Official Gazette, the DOGC, the
Generalitat itself accepted these collectivisations and even accepted the
occupation of land owned by the people who had disappeared from their villages.
This was the practical origin of a multitude of land collectivisations in
Catalonia. Even the ERC-controlled town councils accepted this situation without
major problems[ERC was the governing political party in Catalonia].

At the same time, other areas of the peninsula caught the contagion of the social
revolution (until september it had been largely political, in the form of a
democratic rupture). While in many Valencian industrial towns and cities things
happened in a similar way to Catalonia, in other places the revolution was driven
from outside (Aragon), or was driven both by a minoritarian CNT and by a
majoritarian UGT radicalised by its ranks (Asturias, Andalusia, Castile,
Extremadura, or Murcia). In any case, the revolution was such an indisputable
fact that almost all the republican organisations supported it verbally. They
differed in the model of revolution. The revolution was not the same for Esquerra
Republicana (ERC) than for the Marxists of the POUM or even for the Soviet
communists (who also used the term of National Revolution). But the majority
model was the one promoted by the CNT. In many places where collectivisation was
carried out in the name of both CNT and UGT the accepted formula was the one of
the first organisation.

This plurality of initiatives had to be systematised in some way. The CNT itself
recognised this and held union plenary meetings very frequently to establish
criteria for functioning, clarify misunderstandings and resolve the resulting
conflicts of interest. The flood of affiliation was such that many people came
from new affiliations without knowing either the CNT principles or the previous
agreements.

A major step in bringing order to this revolutionary process was the
https://colectivizaciones.blogspot.com/2009/05/2-el-decreto-de-colectivizaciones.html
of 24
October[https://dogc.gencat.cat/.content/continguts/serveis/republica/1936/19360302.pdf].
It was drafted by Joan P. Fábregas and is a model for establishing a transition
to trade union-based socialism. First of all, it regulates collectivised
companies, which will have a Works Council. If they are not collectivised, and
ownership remains private, a Workers' Control Committee would be set up. All
those enterprises whose owners had been declared fascists, all those employing
more than a hundred workers and those between 50 and 100 workers if three
quarters of their workers so decided in a general assembly, would be
collectivised. The rest would only be collectivised if accepted by the owner.

The trade unions would be represented on the Works Council according to their
location and would assume responsibility for the management of the company.
General Councils of Industry would exist in all branches of industry in order to
plan production. In order to facilitate the organisation of these General
Councils, the figure of the Grouping of Industries (Agrupación) was accepted.
Similar industries could be united under the same legal formula.

The acceptance of an auditor from the Generalitat in all the collectivised
companies could be seen as a controversial point. We'll go there now. Another
factor of state interventionism could be seen in the Industry Councils
themselves, which would have to have 4 delegates from the councils of the
companies in that branch, 8 from the trade unions (according to their
affiliation) and 4 from the Generalitat appointed by the Economy Council, which
would preside over this Industry Council.

We said that this was a controversial point, since while the Consell d'Economia
was directed by Joan P. Fábregas there was a clear direction towards
socialisation. Therefore, the representatives of the Generalitat also came with
this task, breaking any isolationism and corporatism or overcoming workers fears
and reluctancy to manage companies.

But everything changed on 17 December 1936, when Fábregas was dismissed by the
new President of the Generalitat, Tarradellas. The new Consell de la Generalitat
replaced Fábregas with Diego Abad de Santillán, who did not share his same vision
and did not have the same technical skills for the job. In addition, a few weeks
later Tarradellas launched the battery of
https://gredos.usal.es/bitstream/handle/10366/79963/Aproximacion_a_los_decretos_de_S%C2%B4Agaro.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y,
substantially modifying Catalonia's financial and fiscal character. The
collectivisations would be subject to a kind of syndical capitalism controlled by
the Generalitat, without going as far as socialisation, which was what the CNT
wanted. In a report in the autumn of 1938, the cenetistas said that the
Generalitat had only legalised about a hundred of the 500 or so grouping of
industries that existed in Catalonia. The government boycott of the revolution
was manifest.

At the time, there were two apparently contradictory dynamics. On the one hand,
there was strong pressure to unify the CNT and UGT unions into a single central.
During November and December 1936 there were some local branch unions that were
CNT-UGT, as if they were one and the same. However, this process came to a
screeching halt in the winter, and the unions went their separate ways again. The
other process was the spread of the collectivist revolution over large
territories in Aragon, Valencia and Castile, places where anarchism at the local
level had been marginal and where libertarian collectivities were now being
formed non-stop.

At the end of February 1937 the CNT held a Regional Plenum of Trade Unions in
Catalonia. On the one hand, it reorganised the structure of the Industry Unions
and favoured the reappearance of the Industry Federations. On the other hand, it
continued to hold out its hand to the UGT, which did not seem to take notice. The
truth is that in Catalonia the UGT was dominated by the stalinist PSUC, so
reaching out to that trade union centre was not going to work, not even by
appealing to the rank and file. In any case, there was also a general commitment
to socialise the economy as much as possible. This project could only be carried
out at the local level in a few cities and at the general level it was quite
advanced in the wood industry. And in half of Aragon, of course.

But the political situation did not help these economic reorganisation projects.
The May Days 1937 brought all these revolutionary advances to a halt. The CNT
even lost the ministry of Economy of the Generalitat, Santillán being replaced by
the stalinist Joan Comorera. The CNT in Catalonia reacted by centralising and
creating a Political Advisory Commission in July to manage day-to-day decisions
of a political-strategic nature.

In September the momentous National Plenum of the Libertarian Movement took place
in Valencia. The importance of this plenary session lays in the change in the
Confederation's strategic line. The context was the defeat in Barcelona in May
Days, the attack on the collectives in Aragon in August, the presence of
thousands of cenetistas in Republican prisons, and in short the pessimistic
realisation that the CNT could only count on its own forces and that nobody would
help it. And in this "nobody" they included both the IWA and the international
libertarian movement, given its small size. They could not offer more help than
they had done in 1936-37, and it was not enough. That is why they created a few
months later the SIA, Solidarity International Antifascist, in order to broaden
this international sympathising base a little more.

The Plenum accepted the reality that it was not possible to impose a single
economic system in Spain and that various socio-economic projects (republican,
liberal, marxist socialist or cooperativist) would have to coexist. It was
proposed to create a Technical Advisory Council made up of representatives of
workers' organisations, the state and the municipalities. The idea was that some
branches of the economy should be nationalised and others municipalised. The
monopoly of foreign trade was also intended, in line with the project of Fábregas
himself in the previous autumn. Another aspect was the acceptance of
cooperativism as a necessary link between consumer and producer in order to avoid
speculation.

This opinion, which came out of the Plenary, was in line with the report accepted
at the National Plenary of the Regionals, also held in Valencia that same month.
A war economy was imposed and a sort of merger with the State was accepted. These
decisions were applauded by other political forces. The CNT was prepared to
change its political line in order to win the war, something that any other
organisation could say, however much they may have written against the CNT for
making the revolution, which was its historical project.

In this sense, we see how this programme fits more with
http://federalistesdesquerres.blogspot.com/2018/04/joan-peiro-la-seva-visio-federal-de.html's
theory or proposal of the Iberian Federal Social Republic. This is a federalism
not only on a territorial basis but also on an economic basis. Peiró accepted
that there could be territories managed in the way the socialists or republicans
wanted if in exchange there were others that could be managed in the way
anarcho-syndicalism proposed.

The CNT
https://es.scribd.com/doc/310213666/CNT-FAI-Manual-Del-Militante-1937">Militant.
Ángel Pestaña had broken away from Treintismo a few months earlier in order to
create his Syndicalist Party in January 1934 and therefore remained on the
sidelines of all these debates and eventually had no influence on the strategic
line of the CNT, while Treintismo eventually did.

The next milestone was the
http://cgtcatalunya.cat/memoriahistorica/fonts/libros/madrid-2576.pdf. As far as
the economy was concerned, the most important thing was the restructuring of the
industrial federations and above all the creation - formally on 15 February - of
the Confederal Economic Council, CEC. The CNT argued that there should be an
National Economic Council at spanish state level like the one that existed in
Catalonia, but since neither Negrín's government nor the UGT had any intention of
making a move in this direction, at least the Libertarian Movement would do it on
its own. Thus, the CNT promoted Local and County Councils of Economy, which would
be federated at the Regional level and then confederated in the CEC. We would add
that at this time the CAP changed to the Executive Committee of the Libertarian
Movement, which was part of this process of centralisation.

Proposed by https://archive.org/details/C002606272_201803/page/n9/mode/2up, the
CEC served to organise the large number of collectivised companies, collective
workshops, socialised industries, gardens and fields, warehouses, cooperatives,
agricultural unions and economic initiatives of all kinds controlled or promoted
by the Libertarian Movement. By then the movement was an economic power. The most
important matters dealt with by the CEC were legislation and arbitration;
currency, credit and welfare; exploitation of industries and services; raw
materials and substitutes; and distribution and foreign trade. Each of these
subjects had a commission. Each Regional was to have its own CEC which would be
coordinated at state level.

They held a large number of meetings and controlled a huge amount of resources.
And their projects went beyond these remits. For example, there was the proposal
for an Iberian Trade Union Bank (Banco Sindical Ibérico). This project apparently
never materialised, but there were several papers in that direction. Many
collectivist and cooperativist projects always suffered from great economic
hardship and a monetary credit would have allowed the consolidation of important
initiatives. A confederal mutual fund was also envisaged as a kind of "social
security" for the Confederation's membership.

The Banco Sindical had also been envisaged at the Iberian level, including the
UGT. But as we have said, the UGT was never interested in unitary projects of a
revolutionary character, so everything was left in the hands (and on the
shoulders) of the CNT. The Bank was better posed in the National Plenum of
Regionals in August 1938, a plenum which considered the total centralisation of
the Confederal economy. Thus, for a local company to buy a product from another
town which was not in its district, it had to go to the Regional Committee of
Economy, which would be the mediator of the purchase. If a product needed to be
purchased from abroad, then it would be the same CEC that would be in charge of
dealing with it. We can see the bureaucratic danger in these practices. Returning
to the issue of the Trade Union Bank, it should be said that the Central Region
developed a Central Confederal Compensation Fund as a previous step to the
creation of the Bank.

In August, steps were taken to create Technical-Industrial Schools to train
professionals to be able to carry out this task, given that in many localities it
was not possible to set up Local Economic Councils because there were no
militants with the capacity to do so. And as an exceptional measure, the training
of women was encouraged so that they could replace the increasing number of men
on the Front in production. This last point was expressly approved by Mujeres
Libres. Another opinion adopted at that time was the "intensification" of
consumer cooperatives.

Other issues dealt with in these 1938 plenary sessions were family wages and even
a definition of what was meant by the "economic concept of the family". The aim
was to delink production from the individual workers and pay they according to
the nature of their work, disregarding their family and their needs. The family
was extended to all persons living under the same roof without the need for
kinship. A Technical-Administrative Commission was also formed, which came to
have labour inspectors at the disposal of the CEC, to check the conditions of
each workplace.

We can conclude by noting that the Libertarian Movement had created a new body,
the CEC, with an economic-productive character, detached from the trade unions.
In a way, the CNT trade union and the entire Libertarian Movement functioned
under the logic of economic management, acting as a real syndicalist state within
the Republic.

In short, the CNT of 1938 arrived at a kind of corporative socialism or
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_socialism" (not in the medieval sense but in
the sense of trade union control) which advocated the control of the economy by a
trade union corporation for each branch of production. Since the Spanish Republic
was defeated in 1939, this development could not be tested to its full extent.

The CNT made a balance in the post-war period, which led it to completely reject
the turn of 1937 and to return to its libertarian communist line of 1936, which
it defended in exile. The praxis of 1938 fell into oblivion, was condemned as a
deviation resulting from the context of the war and it has hardly ever been
studied in libertarian circles. There is room for many more studies on this
subject, since it was a first-class experiment in economic planning, managed by
libertarians.

Related Link: https://alasbarricadas.org/noticias/node/47085

https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32489
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