RED YEARS BLACK YEARS: A Political History of Spanish Anarchism, 1911-1937. By Robert W. Kern. Institute for the Study of Human Issues. 335 pp.
THE SPANISH ANARCHISTS: The Heroic Years, 1868-1936. By Murray Bookchin. Free Life Editions. 345 pp. $12.50.
Anarchists are perennial losers. Defeated in political battles, they have been neglected by those who study political thought, and virtually ignored or forgotten by historians. When they have managed to sneak into popular consciousness, the image that comes to mind is of bomb-wielding terrorists. When the black flags of anarchy flew in France during May, 1968, they seemed only symbolic of the apparent chaos. And current characterizations of the Red Brigades in Italy, or the Red Army Fraction in Germany as anarchist only confirm that conventional wisdom.
But anarchism seems synonymous with chaos only when the sole recognized form of organization is hierarchy; and it seems to imply terrorism only when the sole permissable mode of action is reformism.
It is our vision that is limited. We have created for ourselves two either-or choices. First, to work through existing hierarchical political institutions, or to join a revolutionary organization which will lead to its own version of hierarchy. Second, to engage in reformist politics, in hopes of winning moderate gains, or to reject parliamentary forms in favor of potentially violent confrontation. Anarchism at its best, however, offers us an alternative both to hierarchy on the one hand, and to reformism or violence on the other: the spirit and practice of direct action.
By acting independently of legally-constituted authority, anarchists argue, people can create their own institutions, and new ways of being. When they join together to exert control over workplace or community, people experience the changes they make as their own. Instead of reinforcing the powerlessness which often accompanies modest improvements granted from above, a strategy of direct action empowers people. It increases their self-confidence, and fortifies them to continue to act.
This alternative derives from the claim that people can live together without domination and subordina 39 tion. Anarchists argue that people can coordinate themselves on the basis of mutuality and cooperation, rather than hierarchy and centralization; and that political power, aside from being unnecessary, corrupts those who exercise it, and demeans those over whom it is exercised. Furthermore, they insist that the strategy for creating this society must be consistent with these principles. People cannot create an egalitarian society through reformist activities which grant legitimacy to the very practices they oppose. Nor can they do so through centralized, bureaucratized, revolutionary organizations which recreate in different form— i.e. leaders and followers, vanguards and masses—long-standing patterns of domination and subordination. Rather, they must be able to take control of their own work-places and living situations, to feel their own powers, to recognize their needs, and their ability to join with others to satisfy them. Centralized decision-making, whether that of governmental bodies or of revolutionary vanguards, deprives people of the opportunity to experience choice and action. It can never prepare them to create, and then to be self-directing members of, a communalist, egalitarian, society.
Simple enough, some would argue, for a relatively primitive society. But how viable could a strategy of direct action be in a soci ety as complex as our own? As a first step in evaluating these issues, we can look to the experience of the Spanish anarchist movement, which achieved massive followings between 1868 and 1936, played a major role in organizing elements of the Spanish working classs (including heavily-industrialized Catalonia), and contributed significantly to the initial defeat of the Generals' rebellion in Barcelona, Madrid, and elsewhere in July, 1936. Even more intriguing, perhaps, from the contemporary vantage point (although, until recently, much the most ignored or suppressed aspect of the history of the Civil War), was the inspiration and support provided by the anarchist movement for widespread experimentation in popularly-based collectives (both agricultural and industrial) which involved hundreds of thousands of people.
Two recent books examine that experience: Bookchin's recognizes the significance of the direct action strategy. Kern's views anarchism through hierarchical spectacles.
The Spanish Anarchists examines the growth and organization of the anarchist movement from its inception until the outbreak of the rebellion in July, 1936 (Bookchin promises another volume on the collectives). Bookchin's focus is on strategy, on the relationship between theory and practice in the growth of the movement, and, in particular, on the tensions between terrorism and revolu tionary organization. He builds a case for the "ability of the Spanish anarchists to patiently knit together highly independent groups into sizable, coherent organizations, to coordinate them into effective social forces when crises emerged." And his evaluation their trials is simply stated: the movement represented "the most magnificent flowering of the century-long history of proletarian socialism."
Robert Kern, on the other hand, seems unable to look at the movement except with limited vision. His "political history of Spanish anarchism" misses the significance o the anarchist attempt to develop non political, non-hierarchical modes of organization. Not surprisingly, his study pays little attention to the growth and development of the popular movement, which marked the real success story of the anarchists in Spain. Instead, he focuses on the biographies of some of the major anarchist leaders, on their maneuverings for control or influence over the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist organizations, and on the consequences of these maneuverings for the political success or failure of anarchism in Spain. In concentrating his attention on politics, however, he neglects the day-to-day activities of militants—those actions which, in fact, build a popular movement. In short, he ignores what is, for anarchists, the strategy of direct action.
But simply to say that anarchism offers us direct action is not sufficient. Historically, direct action, or "propaganda by the deed," has had two rather different meanings. On the one hand, many activists-theorists (among them Michael Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, and Alexander Berkman) have taken it to mean "bombs." Hence, the popular image of anarchists as terrorists and assassins. On the other hand, it has also been taken to mean exemplary action, which recruits adherents by the power of the positive example it sets. Thus, these same theorists ultimately recognized that bombs carry ambiguous messages, at best, and that a far better, and more effective, means of persuasion is the "demonstration effect" of real changes in the fabric of social life. Even a theorist as far removed from anarchism as Hannah Arendt has repeatedly noted that people who truly experience freedom do not give it up without a fight.
The key question then becomes, under what circumstances is direct action of the "exemplary" kind likely to be effective, and what can be done to create an environment which would make it so? Conversely, are there any circumstances in which terrorism is justified, and how are these to be identified?
Surprisingly, perhaps, our own society may constitute an environment where direct action of the first sort is possible. Our freedoms of speech, press, and action allow us considerable room for experimentation. Food co-ops, networks of communal farms, community controlled day-care, alternative radio stations, worker-controlled or self-help health clinics, the Clamshell occupation at Seabrook—while all on a relatively small scale— provide examples of the ways in which people can begin to organize to meet their own needs, and to federate with others in networks of mutual support. Even in this context, however, traditional patterns of domination and subordination must be broken down: people accustomed to keeping in their place need to develop faith in their own ability simply to act before they can even begin to challenge existing structures. Thus—for anarchists—the importance of education (to overcome monopolies of technical knowledge and help to increase self-confidence) and of small-scale organization. Both constitute ways to let people experience their own potential.
But there are problems with this strategy even in a relatively open, democratic society. The past two decades have provided Americans with ample evidence that, when power and privilege are threatened, our government is more than willing to turn to anti-civil libertarian means to keep would-be revolutionaries in check. So the perennial question arises: do such moments call for that other form of direct action? Are these the times for the politics of violent confrontation?
Herein, again, lies the relevance of Spain. There, in the period preceeding the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, civil liberties were far from firmly established, and the political process was subject to continual manipulation and instability. Between 1868 and 1936, Spain passed through monarchy, republic, restoration monarchy, military dictatorship, monarchy, and republic once again. What role could —or should — anarchists have played during those years?
As both these books report, the Spanish anarchists and anarchosyndicalists had maintained throughout this period a fairly consistent, anti-reformist, policy of direct action. They developed a unique blend of anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism which succeeded in uniting, in one broad-based organization, the rural laborers of Andalusia and the industrial workers of Catalonia. In marked contrast to the extensive bureaucracy of the marxist socialist unions, the anarchosyndicalist labor confederation (CNT) had only one paid official—even when its membership exceeded one million workers. Strikes tended to be long and bitter; the right to organize was never safely established. Power had continually to be tested—and taken.
But such a strategy did entail a potential for violence; and both writers attempt to come to terms with this issue. Bookchin treats anarchist terrorism primarily as a response to repression. "The anarchists," he claims, "had been goaded from a generous humanism into a vengeful terrorism." His perspective is made most explicit, perhaps, in his discussion of pistolerismo (the terrorist "politics" of hired gunmen):
When the Captain manufacturers turned to pistolerismo after World War there could be no other answer than the counter-pistolerismo of the anarchists ... pistolerismo and a militant anarchist policy in the CNT emerged as a result of defeats suffered by the moderate trade-union wing. A policy based on acquiescence would have demoralized the labor organization completely.
He goes on to argue that, in later years, anarchist organizations performed the "risky and thankless tasks" of exposing reformism by engaging in a deliberate policy of destabilizing the regime and contributing to the polarization of right and left. At times, Bookchin seems wary of this strategy. Yet his own obvious sympathy for the FA I (a militant organization formed to preserve the anarchist purity of the CNT)—and for its refusal to accept a less militant stance—belies that warning:
To condemn the Anarchists for producing "anarchy" is simply silly; ... One can snicker at their tactics, naivete, recklessness, but more than any other single force in Spain
they had shattered the facade of of liberalism and paved the way for an historic confrontation between the great contending social classes in the penninsula.
Perhaps so. Confrontationist tactics do force people to choose sides. And in the context of such polarization, liberal reformers cannot function: nor could they in Spain. All sides learned the limits of reformism. But at what price? Further destabilzation of the regime, a civil war, and forty years of Franco. What criteria can we use to judge whether the costs were too great? Can a policy which encourages violent confrontation ever make a positive contribution to social change? If so, under what cir cumstances? How do we recognize them?
The limitation of Bookchin's per spective is his failure to recognize in this context that violent confronta tion is not the only possible form of direct action, nor the only alternative to reformism. For example, anarchist militants could conceivably have continued to work within a union structure (as many did) without engaging in the counter-violence which fed into the hands of the right. Direct action need not mean counter-terror. Nevertheless, Bookchin does point out clearly both the limits of reform politics, and the difficulties of maintaining even a strategy of militant (but peaceful) direct action when the opposition is powerful and violent.
Kern, however, misses the point entirely. He denies that a militant, anti-reformist, syndically-oriented policy could have any strategic or organizational validity. And he characterizes those who favored such a policy as "intransigent."
For him, the answers to our questions are simple: confrontation is always counter-productive; reformism is the only "mature" form of social-political action. Militants, he writes, made it difficult for the anarchists to engage in "normal political life." As if anarchists wanted to engage in "normal political life." Even so, Kern's own evidence documents the failure of anarchists to make gains through "normal" political channels when they chose to do so. Thus, although some members of the CNT joined the government of the Republic in hopes of protecting gains previously made by collectivists and others, they were unsuccessful. The collectives had been established by direct action, and had grown up without government support. The were destroyed by government and Communist Party-inspired repression. Participation in the government only implicated the anarchists in the counter-offensive which George Orwell chronicled so movingly in Homage to Catalonia.
But the anarchists, as Bookchin reminds us, achieved real gains in Spain—whether because of, or in spite of, terrorism. They succeeded in organizing large numbers of workers (both members of the traditional proletariat, as well as those Marx dismissed as lumpens, or "old shit") in an effective trade-union federation which was crucial to halting the initial fascist offensive. And, before they were crushed by Communist party and Republican collusion, they managed to sustain one of the most extensive attempts at self-management and popularly-run and coordinated institutions which has yet existed. Their success— however limited it may have been in time and space—was not in their politics, but in their creation of new forms of organization and of social life. The program of direct action may not have proved a guarantee against defeat. Nevertheless, the Spanish experieince suggests that—even in the face of powerful opposition—there are alternatives, both to traditional reformist politics and to Leninist-style communist organizing. In order not to see chaos, we need only change our lenses.
Martha Ackelsberg Assistant Professor of Government Smith College