Keywords: Spain, Collectives

Anarchism in Action

Many people would agree that the anarchist principle 
"from each according to their ability, to each 
according to their needs" is a nice idea.  A self 
managed society with everyone having a real say in 
how things were run is a lovely ideal.  They might 
nod along to the lyrics of "Imagine" by John Lennon 
but then equally shake their heads and tell you that 
such a thing could never work "in the real world".  
You would probably be told that  people are just 
naturally greedy and self-centred and such a thing 
would end in chaos.

However throughout the history of the 20th century ordinary 
working people have succeeded in taking things  into their own hands 
and making a go of it. Nowhere, however, has come closer to a fully 
self-managed anarchist society then large areas of  "republican" 
Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

Here, for a short space of a few years, both on the land and in the 
factories workers and peasants demonstrated that far from chaos 
anarchism was an efficient, desirable and realisable method of 
running society. 

This account of the enormous social revolution in Spain is mainly 
taken from Gaston Leval's  "Collectives in the Spanish Civil War".   
Leval was a French anarchist exiled for resisting the World War I 
draft who spent many years in exile in Spain and Latin America.

He returned in 1936 just in time to document the revolution in 
economic and social organisation as it occurred.  Rather then take 
off for the front he saw the importance of these changes and 
attempted to make a record of some sort for the future. 

The extent of collectivisation on the land was unprecedented.  
Estimates of the numbers in collectives range as high as 5-7 million 
directly or indirectly involved (from Leval himself). Certainly 
millions  took part to some degree from periods of weeks to as long 
as three years as fortunes fluctuated in the war.   At the height of 
collectivisation there were 400 collectives in Aragon, 700 in the 
Levant and 300 in Castile.  Of course many just refuse to believe 
that so many people (whether landless or with fairly large holdings) 
would voluntarily collectivise.

FORCED COLLECTIVISATION?

One accusation which is repeated by almost all historians of the 
Spanish civil war is that the columns of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT 
union enforced collectivisation at the point of a gun. Ironically 
enough this was first put about by no less an authority the Spanish 
Communist Party but it is still accepted as gospel by the majority of 
historians of the civil war.

Of course this doesn't stand up to even a glance at the facts.  The 
CNT was a mainly industrial union based in Barcelona and Madrid.  In 
many areas such as Castile and Aragon their numbers were 
extremely low.  For example there were only 34,000 members of 
the CNT in Aragon, Navarre and Rioja all areas where most of the 
land was collectivised.

The military columns of the CNT moved immediately to the front and 
mostly took no further part in the collectives.   As Leval puts it, 
they "lived on the fringes of the task of social transformation being 
carried out".  Some far sighted militants such as Durutti realising 
their importance sent some members back to the collectives.   But 
these were skilled organisers not armed troops.

Finally in all the collectivised areas there were many "individualists" 
who were allowed to hang on to their land. Far from been harassed 
to join they were often allowed to avail of the many free services of 
the collectives.  Though their numbers declined with time in many 
cases they remained a significant minority.  This couldn't have 
happened if collectivisation was forced.

ARAGON

Let's take a closer look at one region- Leval's first example: 
Aragon.  An estimated 69.5 % of Aragon's 430,000 inhabitants in 
the revolutionary zone  took part in collectives in total, with up to 
400 collectives established.   When Leval arrived in February 1937 
there were 275 collective villages with 141,430 families organised 
into 24 cantonal federations  holding their first conference in Caspe.  
Obviously over the seven months since the Fascist coup in July this 
was a major achievement .

He visited the main collectives  of seven of these federations.  
Collectivisation occurred in a similar way in most of them.  After 
the major landowners had fled the land an assembly was held.  It 
was decided to seize all land and machinery hold it in common .  
Teams were formed to various jobs, each electing recallable 
delegates to a village assembly.

A BETTER LIFE FOR ALL

To distribute the common stock of goods rationing or a family wage 
was brought in.   Given the low level of  Spanish  agriculture and the 
demands of the war it wasn't possible to jump immediately to 
communist distribution (i.e. free goods for all) in Aragon (or most 
other areas) .  However there was a major increase in living 
standards along with a greater say for everyone and a huge range of 
free social services. 

In the village of Graus, for example, the family (which persisted as  
the main social form) wage meant a 15% increase in money going 
into households.  All services such as electricity and gas were free 
as well as free and  hugely improved medical, educational and 
entertainment facilities.  Overall this meant an increase in living 
standards of 50-100%.

There were many increases in productivity and efficiency.  In 
several areas huge new projects were made possible by 
collectivisation.  In Esplus there were four new piggeries producing 
hundreds of animals and the sheep herd increased from 600 to 
2,000.  In Mas de Las Mantas a huge collective bakery handled all 
the baking previously the exclusive task of women in the home.  In 
Alcorisa there had been a 50% increase in cultivated land and 
centralisation of tailor's shops brought a 66% increase in 
production. 

These are just a few examples where the landlord system had held 
back the efficient use of land while peasants and labours had faced 
starvation every year.

At the February meeting of the cantonal federations measures were 
been taken to set aside areas of land for research into better seed 
production in each canton.  It had been suggested, for example, that 
virus free potatoes could be raised in the mountains of upper Aragon  
These type of innovations could never have been dreamed up by the 
landlords who relied entirely on cheap labour (without "wasting" 
money on machines) to keep them well heeled while the majority 
starved.

The Federation was also attempting to promote exchanges between 
collectives with richer ones distributing food and machinery to those 
in less well off areas.  The collectives also supplied the major cities 
voluntarily (unlike the case in the Russian civil war(1921) where 
forced grain seizures by the Bolsheviks killed off any fellow feeling 
between rural and urban workers).  They also sent spare supplies to 
columns at the front.

INDIVIDUALISTS

The conference also took an interesting attitude towards 
'individualist' farmers which contrasted with Stalin's murderous 
forced collectivisation in the 1930s.   The individualists were left to 
their own devices  though the collectives were under no obligation to 
give them any aid (in practice most did).  However they were totally 
forbidden from employing workers and they lost automatic 
inheritance rights.   Many individualists did eventually go over to 
the collectives and they were usually won over by example and not 
forced.

Aragon is only one of the regions covered.   In some other areas 
there was almost a fully communist system in operation.  For 
example in the Naval collective in Huesca a system operated were 
you just went to the collective store and took what you needed.  
Contributions and withdrawals were recorded and all was reduced to 
simple accounting. 

In most areas this just wasn't possible and rationing was the order 
of the day.   However the achievements are sill impressive given the 
miserable state of Spanish agriculture in the first place. 


INDUSTRIAL COLLECTIVES

The CNT was a mainly urban anarcho-syndicalist union drawing much 
of its support from workers in Barcelona and Madrid.  For this 
reason it may seem surprising that industrial collectivisation did not 
go as far as that on the land.  However it must be remembered that 
many of these industries depended almost totally on countries 
outside Spain for both markets and raw materials.   These were 
almost immediately cutoff by the European governments on the 
grounds of "non-interference" in Spain's internal affairs.   Also 
most factories had to retool for the war effort which made huge 
demands on labour time.

Even allowing for this, however, as Leval points out there was not 
true socialisation in many cases "but a worker's Neo-Capitalism".  
By this he meant that the framework of capitalism was maintained 
with workers  running factories, selling goods and sharing the 
profits. 

CNT

His loyalty to the CNT prevents him from pointing the finger here.  
Their refusal to drive the revolution through to it's logical 
conclusion,  abolishing capitalism and refusing to share power with 
the bourgeois in government must be singled out as the decisive 
reason why industry wasn't entirely self-managed.  The CNT's 
syndicalism left them uninterested in politics and political power.   
They left the parliament and state structure intact which gave the 
bourgeois a base from which to rebuild.   They should have 
destroyed  the government's political power entirely and used the 
arms and gold reserves seized to further the revolution.


BARCELONA

All things considered, the achievements in industrial collectivisation 
were still amazing and surprised foreign observers like George 
Orwell.   3000 enterprises in Barcelona were collectivised.   A 
council was elected by an assembly of all the workers to run each 
workplace.   Each section elected to delegates to liaise with the 
council on day to day matters.   The council sent recallable 
representatives to a council for each industry which drew up 
general plans for that industry.

All the major services were greatly improved.  Equal wages were 
paid to all grades and the general wage level was increased for most 
workers.

For example all the small electricity generators in private hands 
were linked together and  new dams and generators built to give a 
more efficient system.  The water supply which had been erratic 
was improved with supply going up to 150,000 cubic metres fairly 
quickly (Leval explains, however that it couldn't be increased much 
further as most existing natural catchments were been used and, 
presumably, there wasn't time to build reservoirs).

Perhaps the most dramatic improvement was on the trams, the 
major method of transport in  Barcelona.  Five days after the 
fascists were beaten off the streets the trams were running under 
workers' control.  The fleet had been increased from 600 to 700 by 
the repair of 100 trams previously discarded as un-fixable.  A new 
safety and signal system was built.  Track and roadway repaired and 
improved, an automatic breakdown warning system installed and 
many lines re-routed. Passengers carried increase from 
183,543,516 to 233,557,506 at a standard class cheap fare.  Tell 
that to anyone who maintains workers are too ignorant to run things 
themselves!

The Spanish revolution proved conclusively, if only briefly, that 
given a chance workers and peasants can run things themselves a lot 
better then the bosses.   The elimination of the profit motive and the 
undistorted application of technology improved life greatly for those 
involved.  

Workers' self-management and the agricultural collectives didn't 
collapse due to some flaw in human nature.  They were smashed by 
fascist attacks from the front and Communist tanks in the rear (for 
example a division of tanks under the command of the Communist 
general Lister was used to destroy most of the Aragon collectives).   
Anarchism as a method of organising society faced the test of 
history and passed with flying colours.

Des McCarron


The above article originally appeared in the Irish 
anarchist paper Workers Solidarity.

The Workers Solidarity Movement can be 
contacted at

WSM
PO Box 1528
Dublin 8
Ireland.

Further reading
Anarchism in Action: The Spanish revolution  (WSM #1.50)
Lessons of the Spanish revolution, Vernon Richards
Collectives in the Spanish civil war, Gaston Leval



