This article is an adapted translation of a text by Jade Saab, a Lebanese-Canadian researcher and activist. She examines the contradictions and difficulties of the money question in the Spanish Revolution (1936-1937) through the strategic choices of the National Labor Confederation (CNT). She analyzes the attempt to abolish money, the limitations encountered by the state's maintenance of financial institutions, and emphasizes the need for a more coherent revolutionary approach to this question. Socialists have long considered money a central instrument of capital. By regulating not only exchanges and social relations, it also reinforces the domination, alienation, and fragmentation of workers. Its abolition thus became a key goal for revolutionaries. Karl Marx warned unions against excessive focus on day-to-day struggles, urging them instead to focus on the abolition of the wage system, an idea also echoed by the American union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Piotr Kropotkin, the main theoretician of anarcho-communism, clarified that this implied not a new currency, but an organization based on the needs and capabilities of each individual.
Despite this theoretical consensus, historical examples are rare. The Paris Commune did not abolish money, and the Russian Revolution maintained, and even further complicated, the wage system. Revolutionary theories often treat this abolition as a secondary issue, or one that occurred after the overthrow of the state. Here, we propose to revisit some significant events of the Spanish Revolution, a prime example of how money and financial institutions appear to have been insufficiently strategically designed by the CNT.
The CNT at the heart of the revolution
The Spanish Revolution must be understood as the culmination of a long "spiral of social conflict"[1], in which the opposing camps-the Church, the army, and the landowners on the one hand, the trade unions on the other-triggered a process of mutual radicalization, culminating in a final struggle for hegemony. This final phase took the form of a failed coup d'état, staged by General Francisco Franco in July 1936 and subsequently degenerated into civil war. If the coup is seen as the trigger for the revolution, its roots lie in a series of earlier armed insurrections, particularly those of January 1933 (led by the CNT) and August 1934 (staged by the Socialist Party and supported by the CNT).
In May 1936, the CNT synthesized its theoretical elaboration of the revolution and the type of society it desired in the confederal concept of libertarian communism .[2]The proposal summarized the organization's position on money and supported the paradoxical idea that, although the rules of production and exchange should be subject to the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", "producer's cards" would still be necessary, certifying "the value of the work done by the owner". This contradictory position was linked to the pluralist nature of the CNT and reflected the divergences between its rural and urban sections. Divergences that became concrete after the coup d'état.
Franco's coup d'état broke out in Spanish Morocco on 17 July 1936. Numerous garrisons throughout Spain joined the rebellion and some managed to take over cities. Others remained loyal to the Republic. In several cases, barracks were attacked by armed workers who redistributed weapons and created trade union militias. As a result, after the failure of the coup, the central state lost control of its coercive apparatus, a situation of dual power arose, with the CNT in the central position[3].
Soon after, workers seized a third of the rural territory of Republican Spain, equal to about two-thirds of the arable land. Organized into agricultural collectives[4], they also requisitioned factories and services in the sectors of heavy industry, energy, water and commerce. In Catalonia, 80% of the enterprises were controlled by workers[5]. These agricultural collectives were governed by revolutionary committees invested with legislative and executive powers[6].
In rural agricultural communities, money was replaced by ration cards that granted workers free access to food depending on their family size[7]. In urban communities, a system of producer cards was introduced. The distribution of goods was based on the worker's production. In some communities, however, wages and the monetary system were maintained due to opposition from non-CNT workers[8]. Wages were increased and numerous previously inaccessible benefits were introduced, such as holidays and free health care.
To facilitate the organization of work on a national scale, the CNT established the National Industrial Federations (FIN)[9]. Rural agricultural collectives initiated systems of exchange and barter with neighboring towns and created local and regional federations[10]. "Libertarian communism" seemed to be taking root.
Financial institutions were neglected
While workers at the front were rapidly reorganizing the economy along libertarian lines, the CNT leaders abandoned the idea of pushing the revolution to its most radical conclusions. Instead, they chose to join the central government. The CNT justified this decision by arguing that the state, understood as an instrument of repression in the service of Capital, no longer existed. This reasoning would prove to be flawed.
The CNT was given secondary ministries within what it called a "revolutionary government", but found itself without any real capacity for influence. Dominated by the Socialist Party, the central government was primarily interested in maintaining good relations with France, England and Belgium, protecting their economic interests[11]. This was considered necessary to guarantee supplies of weapons, which were dramatically insufficient in the war against Franco. But this orientation towards European democracies put the central government in direct opposition to the autonomous agricultural workers' collectives. To demonstrate its control over the Republican territories, the government launched a campaign aimed at "normalising" the agricultural collectives through a double process of legalisation and economic isolation.
This task was facilitated by the CNT's disinterest in financial institutions. The CNT's belief in the abolition of money-replaced by non-monetary exchanges-led it to neglect the organization of workers within financial institutions, and when the CNT decided to enter government, no effort was made to take control of it. One exception was a plan, drawn up by a CNT militia in Madrid but quickly abandoned, which involved the theft of the government's gold reserves .[12]
In the wave of expropriation of factories and lands, the banks remained untouched. The CNT believed they would no longer play any role in a post-revolutionary society. Thus, although the agricultural collectives federated into the FIN, they did not integrate into the networks of non-nationalized factories nor into those controlled by other political parties or collectives. Their economic sustainability was therefore not guaranteed. Furthermore, the central government quickly regained control of foreign trade.
Agricultural communities could no longer bypass Madrid for economic exchanges or the supply of materials and equipment.
The central state quickly deprived the agricultural communities of the necessary financial resources.
The revolutionary councils that administered these communities were progressively replaced by traditional municipalities dependent on Madrid.
This process of legalization and integration became a general feature of the revolution and also extended to the trade union militias and the popular courts. The interference of the central government in the management of finances and resources caused uncontrolled inflation in the Republican territories[13], a deterioration in the quality of weapons[14]and, finally, defeat by Franco's troops.
The lessons of this Revolution
What can we learn from the Spanish case? The CNT's decision to join the central government and its rejection of the transition to a moneyless society are both linked to a flaw in its revolutionary theory.
As developed in the "concept of confederal libertarian communism," the CNT ignored the fact that, during a revolution, power is polycentric: multiple centers of power vie simultaneously for hegemony. The transition of power does not simply occur from one camp to another, even when power is decentralized. The parallel emergence of the agricultural collectives and the central state dragged the CNT into a complex situation, in which pursuing revolutionary goals meant entering into direct conflict with other centers of power, formally allied against Franco. Once in government, the CNT's lack of a trade union presence within financial institutions granted the central government a decisive advantage in terms of economic resources over the collectives. The CNT thus found itself without the influence necessary to maintain the gains made in the early stages of the revolution.
Some authors[15]argue that the main mistake of the CNT was not to have carried the revolution to its conclusion. However, even a possible victory of the CNT would not have necessarily resulted in a society without money. Contempt for financial institutions would have worked against it anyway.
If revolutions are primarily local events, they must nevertheless take into account the international political dimension. Even if an anarchist Spain had emerged, it could not have completely done without money, which was necessary to function and exchange within a capitalist world. Moreover, in the CNT's conception of libertarian communism, forcing people to use money or forcing them to join agricultural collectives was considered unacceptable. In the post-revolutionary society envisioned by the CNT, individuals could remain independent of the collectivist system; and this is what the CNT did during the war, allowing those who did not want to join collectives to keep their plots of land .[16]
Is it therefore impossible to build a moneyless society immediately after the revolution? Should we instead adopt a gradualist approach? Not necessarily. In any revolutionary theory that aims to abolish the use of money, it becomes important to consider a post-revolutionary dual system: a system in which internal affairs function without money, but in which a monetary system is simultaneously maintained to manage interstate relations and exchanges with individuals outside the collective system. Both systems would, however, remain faithful to the values of the revolution, such as the abolition of exploitation.
Integrating this parallel approach into revolutionary theory means that pre-revolutionary organizations should not ignore financial institutions as a battleground-including all those institutions presumed to disappear in a post-revolutionary system. This may seem counterintuitive. Why would a revolutionary organization concern itself with institutions that, in theory, should no longer exist after the revolution? Because, on the one hand, a parallel system would imply that such institutions would not immediately become obsolete. On the other, since power during a revolution is polycentric-and sometimes competitive-organizing within these institutions can divert valuable resources from other centers of power. Developing revolutionary theories that better integrate these parallel systems would therefore avoid the same mistakes made by the CNT.
*) Article published in n. 371, May 2026, Alternative Libertaire edited by Niels Zwarteveen
[1]1 George Lawson, Anatomies of Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 2019, p. 184.
[2]2 The full text is available in English at Theanarchistlibrary.org
[3]3 Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, Volume 1, The Meltzer Press, 2001, p. 131.
[4]4 Robert Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, Janus Publishing Company Limited, 1999, p. 326.
[5]5 Ibid, p. 463.
[6]6 Ibid, p. 332 ; Stuart Christie, We, the Anarchists !, AK Press, 2002, p. 186 ; Hugh Thomas, « Anarchist agrarian collectives in the Spanish civil war », The Republic and the Civil War in Spain, R. Carr, 1971, p. 240 ; Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and counterrevolution, University of North Carolina Press, 1991, p. 65-66.
[7]7 Alexander, op. cit., p. 329; Thomas, op. cit., p. 250.
[8]8 Alexander, op. cit., p. 533.
[9]9 Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, Volume 2, Christie Books, 2005, p. 32.
[10]10 Alexander, op. cit., p. 329.
[11]11 Bolloten, op. cit., p. 227.
[12]12 Alexander, op. cit., p. 175.
[13]13 Martín-Aceña, Pablo, Elena Martinez Ruiz et María A. Pons., «War and economics: Spanish civil war finances revisited», European Review of Economic History 16 no 2, 2012, p. 158.
[14]14 Kowalsky, Daniel. « Operation X: Soviet Russia and the Spanish Civil War », Bulletin of Spanish Studies 91 no 1-2, 2014, p. 168-169.
[15]15 See for example the work of Vernon Richard Lessons of the Spanish Revolution .
[16]16Alexander, op. cit., p. 372.
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