Chapter 4 : 
The Objectives of Anarchosyndicalism
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19381938

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Author : Rudolph Rocker

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4. The Objectives of Anarchosyndicalism



Anarcho-Syndicalism versus political socialism; Political parties and labor unions; Federalism versus 
Centralism; Germany and Spain; The organization of Anarcho-Syndicalism; The impotence of political 
parties for social reconstruction; The CNT in Spain: its aims and methods; Constructive work of the labor 
syndicates and peasant collectives in Spain; Anarcho-Syndicalism and national politics; Problems of our 
time. 


Modern Anarcho-Syndicalism is a direct continuation of those 
social aspirations which took shape in the bosom of the First 
International and which were best understood and most strongly held by 
the libertarian wing of the great workers' alliance. Its present day 
representatives are the federations in the different countries of the 
revived International Workingmen's Association of 1922, the most 
important of which is the powerful Federation of Labor (Confederación 
National de Trabajo) in Spain. Its theoretical assumptions are based on 
the teachings of Libertarian or Anarchist Socialism, while its form of 
organization is largely borrowed from revolutionary Syndicalism, which 
in the years from 1900 to 1910 experienced a marked upswing, 
particularly in France. It stands in direct opposition to the political 
Socialism of our day, represented by the parliamentary labor parties in 
the different countries. While in the time of this First International 
barely the first beginnings of these parties existed in Germany, France 
and Switzerland, today we are in a position to estimate the results of 
their tactics for Socialism and the labor movement after more than 
sixty years' activity in all countries.

Participation in the politics of the bourgeois states has not 
brought the labor movement a hairs' breadth closer to Socialism, but, 
thanks to this method, Socialism has almost been completely crushed and 
condemned to insignificance. The ancient proverb: "Who eats of the pope, 
dies of him," has held true in this content also; who eats of the state 
is ruined by it. Participation in parliamentary politics has affected 
the Socialist labor movement like an insidious poison. It destroyed the 
belief in the necessity of constructive Socialist activity and, worst of 
all, the impulse to self-help, by inoculating people with the ruinous 
delusion that salvation always comes from above.

Thus, in place of the creative Socialism of the old International, 
there developed a sort of substitute product which has nothing in common 
with real Socialism but the name. Socialism steadily lost its character 
of a cultural ideal, which was to prepare the peoples for the 
dissolution of capitalist society, and, therefore, could not let itself 
be halted by the artificial frontiers of the national states. In the 
minds of the leaders of this new phase of the Socialist movement the 
interests of the national state were blended more and more with the 
alleged aims of their party, until at last they became unable to 
distinguish any definite boundaries between them. So inevitably the 
labor movement was gradually incorporated in the equipment of the 
national state and restored to this equilibrium which it had actually 
lost before.

It would be a mistake to find in this strange about-face an 
international betrayal by the leaders, as has so often been done. The 
truth is that we have to do here with a gradual assimilation to the 
modes of thought of capitalist society, which is a condition of the 
practical activities of the labor parties of today, and which 
necessarily affects the intellectual attitude of their political 
leaders. These very parties which had once set out to conquer Socialism 
saw themselves compelled by the iron logic of conditions to sacrifice 
their Socialist convictions bit by bit to the national policies of the 
state. They became, without the majority of their adherents ever 
becoming aware of it, political lightning rods for the security of the 
capitalist social order. The political power which they had wanted to 
conquer had gradually conquered their Socialism until there was scarcely 
anything left of it.

Parliamentarianism, which quickly attained a dominating position 
in the labor parties of the different countries, lured a lot of 
bourgeois minds and career-hungry politicians into the Socialist camp, 
and this helped to accelerate the internal decay of original Socialist 
principles. Thus Socialism in the course of time lost its creative 
initiative and became an ordinary reform movement which lacked any 
element of greatness. People were content with successes at the polls, 
and no longer attributed any importance to social upbuilding and 
constructive education of the workers for this end. The consequences of 
this disastrous neglect of one of the weightiest problems, one of 
decisive importance for the realization of Socialism, were revealed in 
their full scope when after the World War, a revolutionary situation 
arose in many of the countries of Europe. The collapse of the old system 
had, in several states, put into the hands of the Socialists the power 
they had striven for so long and pointed to as the first prerequisite 
for the realization of Socialism. In Russia the seizure of power by the 
left wing of state Socialism, in the form of Bolshevism paved the way, 
not for a Socialist society, but for the most primitive type of 
bureaucratic state capitalism and a reversion to the political 
absolutism which was long ago abolished in most countries by bourgeois 
revolutions. In Germany, however, where the moderate wing in the form of 
Social Democracy attained to power, Socialism, in its long years of 
absorption in routine parliamentary tasks, had become so bogged down 
that it was no longer capable of any creative act whatsoever. Even a 
bourgeois democratic sheet like the Frankfurter Zeitung felt obliged to 
confirm that "the history of European peoples has not previously 
produced a revolution that has been so poor in creative ideas and so 
weak in revolutionary energy."

But that was not all: not only was political Socialism in no 
position to undertake any kind of constructive effort in the direction 
of Socialism, it did not even possess the moral strength to hold on to 
the achievements of bourgeois Democracy and Liberalism, and surrendered 
the country without resistance to Fascism, which smashed the entire 
labor movement to bits with one blow. It had become so deeply immersed 
in the bourgeois state that it had lost all sense of constructive 
Socialist action and felt itself tied to the barren routine of everyday 
practical politics as a galley-slave was chained to his bench.

Modern Anarcho-Syndicalism is the direct reaction against the 
concepts and methods of political Socialism, a reaction which even 
before the war had already made itself manifest in the strong upsurge of 
the Syndicalist labor movement in France, Italy, and other countries, 
not to speak of Spain, where the great majority of the organized workers 
had always remained faithful to the doctrines of the First 
International.

The term "workers' syndicate" meant in France merely a trade union 
organization of producers for the immediate betterment of their economic 
and social status. But the rise of revolutionary Syndicalism gave this 
original meaning a much wider and deeper import. Just as the part is, so 
to speak, the unified organization for definite political effort within 
the modern constitutional state, and seeks to maintain the bourgeois 
order in one form or another, so, according to the Syndicalist view, the 
trade union, the syndicate, is the unified organization of labor and 
has for its purpose the defense of the interests of the producers within 
existing society and the preparing for and the practical carrying out of 
the reconstruction of social life after the pattern of Socialism. It 
has, therefore, a double purpose: 1. As the fighting organization of 
the workers against the employers to enforce the demands of the workers 
for the safeguarding and raising of their standard of living; 2. As the 
school for the intellectual training of the workers to make them 
acquainted with the technical management of production and economic life 
in general so that when a revolutionary situation arises they will be 
capable of taking the socio-economic organism into their own hands and 
remarking it according to Socialist principles.

Anarcho-Syndicalists are of the opinion that political parties, 
even when they bear a socialist name, are not fitted to perform either 
of these two tasks. The mere fact that, even in those countries where 
political Socialism commanded powerful organizations and had millions of 
voters behind it, the workers had never been able to dispense with trade 
unions because legislation offered them no protection in their struggle 
for daily bread, testifies to this. It frequently happened that in just 
these sections of the country where the Socialist parties were strongest 
the wages of workers were lowest and the conditions of labor worst. 
That was the case, for example, in the northern industrial districts of 
France, where Socialists were in the majority in numerous city 
administrations, and in Saxony and Silesia, where throughout its 
existence German Social Democracy had been able to show a large 
following.

Governments and parliaments seldom decide on economic or social 
reforms on their own initiative, and where this has happened thus far 
the alleged improvements have always remained a dead letter in the vast 
waste of laws. Thus the modest attempts of the English parliament in the 
early period of big industry, when the legislators, frightened by the 
horrible effects of the exploitation of children, at last resolved on 
some trifling amelioration's, for a long time had almost no effect. On 
the one hand they ran afoul of the lack of understanding of the workers 
themselves, on the other they were sabotaged outright by the employers. 
It was much the same with the well-known law which the Italian 
government enacted in the middle 90's to forbid women who were compelled 
to toil in the sulfur mines in Sicily from taking their children down 
into the mines with them. This law also remained a dead letter, because 
these unfortunate women were so poorly paid that they were obliged to 
disregard the law. Only a considerable time later, when these working 
women had succeeded in organizing, and thus forcing up their standard of 
living, did the evil disappear of itself. There are plenty of similar 
instances in the history of every country.

But even the legal authorization of a reform is no guarantee of 
its permanence unless there exist outside of parliament militant masses 
who are ready to defend it against every attack. Thus the English 
factory owners, despite the enactment of the ten-hour law in 1848, 
shortly afterwards availed themselves of an industrial crisis to compel 
workers to toil for eleven or even twelve hours. When the factory 
inspectors took legal proceedings against individual employers on this 
account, the accused were not only acquitted, the Government hinted to 
the inspectors that they were not to insist on the letter of the law, so 
that the workers were obliged, after economic conditions had revived 
somewhat, to make the fight for the ten-hour day all over again on their 
own resources. Among the few economic improvements which the November 
Revolution of 1918 brought to the German workers, the eight-hour day was 
the most important. But it was snatched back from the workers by the 
employers in most industries, despite the fact that it was in the 
statutes, actually anchored legally in the Weimar Constitution itself.

But if political parties are absolutely incapable of making the 
slightest contribution to the improvement of the standard of living of 
the workers within present day society, they are far less capable to 
carry on the organic upbuilding of a Socialist community or even to pave 
the way for it, since they utterly lack every practical requirement for 
such an achievement. Russia and Germany have given quite sufficient 
proof of this.

The lancehead of the labor movement is, therefore, not the 
political party but the trader union, toughened by daily combat and 
permeated by Socialist spirit. Only in the realm of economy are the 
workers able to display their full social strength, for it is their 
activity as producers which holds together the whole social structure, 
and guarantees the existence of society at all. In any other field they 
are fighting on alien soil and wasting their strength in hopeless 
struggles which bring them not an iota nearer to the goal of their 
desires. in the field of parliamentary politics the worker is like the 
giant Antaeus of the Greek legend, whom Hercules was able to strangle 
after he took his feet off the earth who was his mother. Only as 
producer and creator of social wealth does he become aware of his 
strength; in solidaric union with his fellows he creates in the trade 
union the invincible phalanx which can withstand any assault, if it is 
aflame with the spirit of freedom and animated by the ideal of social 
justice.

For the Anarcho-Syndicalists the trade union is by no means a mere 
transitory phenomenon bound up with the duration of capitalist society, 
it is the germ of the Socialist society of the future, the elementary 
school of Socialism in general. Every new social structure makes organs 
for itself in the body of the old organism. Without this preliminary any 
social evolution is unthinkable. Even revolutions can only develop and 
mature the germs which already exist and have made their way into the 
consciousness of men; they cannot themselves create these germs or 
create new worlds out of nothing. It therefore concerns us to plant 
these germs while there is still yet time and bring them to the 
strongest possible development, so as to make the task of the coming 
social revolution easier and to ensure its permanence.

All the educational work of the Anarcho-Syndicalist is aimed at 
this purpose. Education for Socialism does not mean for them trivial 
campaign propaganda and so-called "politics-of-the-day," but the effort 
to make clear to the workers the intrinsic connections among social 
problems by technical instruction and the development of their 
administrative capacities, to prepare them for their rôle of re-shapers 
of economic life, and give them the moral assurance required for the 
performance of the task. No social body is better fitted for this 
purpose than the economic fighting organizations of the workers; it 
gives a definite direction to their social activities and toughens their 
resistance in the immediate struggle for the necessities of life and the 
defense of their human rights. This direct and unceasing warfare with 
the supporters of the present system develops at the same time the 
ethical concepts without which any social transformation is impossible: 
vital solidarity with their fellows-in-destiny and moral responsibility 
for their own actions.

Just because the educational work of the Anarcho-Syndicalists is 
directed toward the development of independent thought and action, they 
are outspoken opponents of all those centralizing tendencies which are 
so characteristic of all political labor parties. But centralism, that 
artificial organization from above which turns over the affairs of 
everybody in a lump to a small minority, is always attended by barren 
official routine; and this crushes individual conviction, kills all 
personal initiative by lifeless discipline and bureaucratic 
ossification, and permits no independent action. The organization of 
Anarcho-Syndicalism is based on the principles of Federalism, on free 
combination from below upward, putting the right of self-determination 
of every member above everything else and recognizing only the organic 
agreement of all on the basis of like interests and common convictions.

It has often been charged against federalism that it divides the 
forces and cripples the strength of organized resistance, and, very 
significantly, it has been just the representative of the political 
labor parties and of the trade unions under their influence who have 
kept repeating this charge to the point of nausea. But here, too, the 
facts of life have spoken more clearly than any theory. There was no 
country in the world where the whole labor movement was so completely 
centralized and the technique of organization developed to such extreme 
perfection as in Germany before Hitler's accession to power. A powerful 
bureaucratic apparatus covered the whole country and determined every 
political and economic expression of the organized workers. In the very 
last elections the Social Democratic and Communist parties united over 
twelve million voters for their candidates. But after Hitler seized 
power six million organized workers did not raise a finger to avert the 
catastrophe which had plunged Germany into the abyss, and which in a few 
months beat their organization completely to pieces.

But in Spain, where Anarcho-Syndicalism had maintained its hold 
upon organized labor from the days of the First International, and by 
untiring libertarian propaganda and sharp fighting had trained it to 
resistance, it was the powerful C.N.T. which by the boldness of its 
action frustrated the criminal plans of Franco and his numerous helpers 
at home and abroad, and by their heroic example spurred the Spanish 
workers and peasants to the battle against Fascism--a fact which Franco 
himself has been compelled to acknowledge. Without the heroic resistance 
of the Anarcho-Syndicalist labor unions the Fascist reactions would in 
a few weeks have dominated the whole country.

When one compares the technique of the federalist organization of 
the C.N.T. with the centralistic machine which the German workers had 
built for themselves, one is surprised by the simplicity of the former. 
In the smaller syndicates every task for the organization was performed 
voluntarily. In the larger alliances, where naturally established 
official representatives were necessary, these were elected for one year 
only and received the same pay as the workers in their trade. Even the 
General Secretary of the C.N.T. was no exception to this rule. this is 
an old tradition which has been kept up in Spain since the days of the 
International. This simple form of organization not only sufficed the 
Spanish workers for turning the C.N.T. into a fighting unit of the first 
rank, it also safeguarded them against any bureaucratic regime in their 
own ranks and helped them to display that irresistible spirit of 
solidarity and tenaciousness which is so characteristic of this 
organization, and which one encounters in no other country.

For the state centralization is the appropriate form of 
organization, since it aims at the greatest possible uniformity in 
social life for the maintenance of political and social equilibrium. But 
for a movement whose very existence depends on prompt action at any 
favorable moment and on the independent thought and action of its 
supporters, centralism could but be a curse by weakening its power of 
decision and systematically repressing all immediate action. If, for 
example, as was the case in Germany, every local strike had first to be 
approved by the Central, which was often hundreds of mils away and was 
not usually not in a position to pass a correct judgment on the local 
conditions, one cannot wonder that the inertia of the apparatus of 
organization renders a quick attack quite impossible, and there thus 
arises a state of affairs where the energetic and intellectually alert 
groups no longer serve as patterns for the less active, but are 
condemned by these to inactivity, inevitably bringing the whole movement 
to stagnation. Organization is, after all, only a means to an end. When 
it becomes an end in itself, it kills the spirit and the vital 
initiative of its members and sets up that domination by mediocrity 
which is the characteristic of all bureaucracies.

Anarcho-Syndicalists are, therefore, of the opinion that trade 
union organization should be of such a character as to afford workers 
the possibility of achieving the utmost in their struggle against the 
employers, and at the same time provide them with a basis from which 
they will be able in a revolutionary position to proceed with reshaping 
of economic and social life.

Their organization is accordingly constructed on the following 
principles: The workers in each locality join the unions for their 
respective trades, and these are subject to the veto of no Central but 
enjoy the entire right of self-determination. The trade unions of a city 
or rural district combine in a so-called labor cartel. The labor 
cartels constitute the centers for local propaganda and education; they 
weld the workers together as a class and prevent the rise of any narrow-
minded factional spirit. In times of local labor trouble they arrange 
for the solidaric cooperation of the whole body of organized labor in 
the use of every agency available under the circumstances. All the 
labor cartels are grouped according to districts and regions to form 
the National Federation of Labor Cartels, which maintain the permanent 
connection between the local bodies, arranges for free adjustment of the 
productive labor of the members of the different organizations on co-
operative lines, provide for the necessary cooperation in the field of 
education, in which the stronger cartels will need to come to the aid of 
the weaker ones, and in general support the local groups with council 
and guidance.

Every trade union is, moreover, federatively allied with all the 
same organizations in the same trade throughout the country, and these 
in turn with all related trades, so that all are combined in general 
industrial alliances. It is the task of these alliances to arrange for 
the cooperative action of the local groups, to conduct solidaric 
strikes where the necessity arises, and to meet all the demands of the 
day-to-day struggle between capital and labor. Thus the Federation of 
Labor Cartels and the Federation of Industrial Alliances constitute the 
two poles about which the whole life of the trade unions revolves.

Such a form of organization not only gives the workers every 
opportunity for direct action in their struggles for daily bread, it 
also provides them with the necessary preliminaries for carrying through 
the reorganization of social life on a Socialist plan by their own 
strength and without alien intervention, in case of a revolutionary 
crisis. Anarcho-Syndicalists are convinced that a Socialist economic 
order cannot be created by the decrees and statutes of a government, but 
only by the solidaric collaboration of the workers with hand or brain in 
each special branch of production; that is, through the taking over of 
the management of all plants by the producers themselves under such form 
that the separate groups, plants and branches of industry are 
independent members of the general economic organism and systematically 
carry on production and the distribution of the products in the interest 
of the community on the basis of free mutual agreements.

In such a case the labor cartels would take over the existing 
social capital in each community, determine the needs of the inhabitants 
of their districts, and organize local consumption. Through the agency 
of the national Federation of Labor Cartels it would be possible to 
calculate the total requirements of the country and adjust the work of 
production accordingly. On the other hand, it would be the task of the 
Industrial Alliances to take control of all the instruments of 
production, machines, raw materials, means of transportation and the 
like, and to provide the separate producing groups with what they need. 
In a word: 1. Organization of the plants by the producers themselves and 
direction of the work by labor councils elected by them. 2. 
Organization of the total production of the country by the industrial 
and agricultural alliances. 3. Organization of consumption by the Labor 
Cartels.

In this respect, also practical experience has given the best 
instruction. It has shown us that economic questions in the Socialist 
meaning cannot be solved by a government, even when that is meant the 
celebrated dictatorship of the proletariat. In Russia the Bolshevist 
dictatorship stood for almost two whole years helpless before its 
economic problems and tried to hide its incapacity behind a flood of 
decrees and ordinances, of which ninety-nine percent were buried at once 
in the various bureaus. If the world could be set free by decrees, there 
would long ago have been no problems left in Russia. In its fanatical 
zeal for government, Bolshevism has violently destroyed just the most 
valuable beginnings of a Socialist social order, by suppressing the co-
operatives, bringing the trade unions under state control, and depriving 
the soviets of their independence almost from the beginning. Kropotkin 
said with justice in his "Message to the Workers of the West European 
Countries":"Russia has shown us the way in which Socialism cannot be 
realized, although the populace, nauseated with the old regime, opposed 
no active resistance to the experiments of the new government. The idea 
of the workers' councils for the control of the political and economic 
life is, in itself, of extraordinary importance...But so long as the 
country is dominated by the dictatorship of a party, the workers' and 
peasants' councils naturally lose their significance. They are thereby 
degraded to the same passive rôle which the representatives of the 
estates used to play in the time of the absolute monarchies. A workers' 
council ceases to be a free and valuable adviser when no free press 
exists in the country, as has been the case with us for over two years. 
Worse still: the workers' and peasants' councils lose all their meaning 
when no public propaganda takes place before their election, and the 
elections themselves are conducted under the pressure of party 
dictatorship. Such a government by councils (soviet government) amounts 
to a definite step backward as soon as the Revolution advances to the 
erection of new society on a new economic basis: it becomes just a dead 
principle on a dead foundation."

	The course of events has proved Kropotkin right on every point. 
Russia is today farther from Socialism than any other country. 
Dictatorship does not lead to the economic and social liberation of the 
toiling masses, but to the suppression of even the most trivial freedom 
and the development of an unlimited despotism which respects no rights 
and treads underfoot every feeling of human dignity. What the Russian 
worker has gained economically under this regime is a most ruinous form 
of human exploitation, borrowed from the most extreme stage of 
capitalism, in the shape of the Stakhanov system, which raises his 
productive capacity to its highest limit and degrades him to galley 
slave, who is denied all control of his personal labor, and who must 
submit to every order of his superiors if he does not wish to expose 
himself to penalties life and liberty. But compulsory labor is the last 
road that can lead to Socialism. It estranges the man from the 
community, destroys his joy in his daily work, and stifles that sense of 
personal responsibility to his fellows without which there can be no 
talk of Socialism at all. 
We shall not even speak of Germany here. One could not reasonably 
expect of a party like the Social Democrats--whose central organ 
Vorwärts, just on the evening before the November Revolution of 1918 
warned the workers against precipitancy, "as the German people are not 
ready for a republic"--that it would experiment with Socialism. Power, we 
might say, fell into its lap overnight, and it actually did not know 
what to do with it. Its absolute impotence contributed not a little to 
enabling Germany to bask today in the sun of the Third Reich.

The Anarcho-Syndicalist labor unions of Spain, and especially of 
Catalonia, where their influence is strongest, have shown us an example 
in this respect which is unique in the history of Socialist labor 
movement. In this they have only confirmed what the Anarcho-Syndicalists 
have always insisted on: that the approach to Socialism is possible only 
when the workers have created the necessary organism for it, and when 
above all they have previously prepared for it by a genuinely 
Socialistic education and direct action. But this was the case in Spain, 
where since the days of the International the weight of the labor 
movement had lain, not in political parties, but in the revolutionary 
trade unions.

When, on July 19, 1936, the conspiracy of the Fascist generals 
ripened into open revolt and was put down in a few days by the heroic 
resistance of the C.N.T.(National Federation of Labor) and the 
F.A.I.(Anarchist Federation of Iberia), ridding Catalonia of the enemy 
and frustrating the plan of the conspirators, based as it was on sudden 
surprise, it was clear that the Catalonian workers would not stop 
halfway. So there followed the collectivizing of the land and the taking 
over of the plants by the workers' and peasants' syndicates; and this 
movement, which was released by the initiative of the C.N.T. and the 
F.A.I., with irresistible power overran Aragon, the Levante and other 
sections of the country, and even swept along with it a large part of 
the trade unions of the Socialist Party, organized in the U.G.T. 
(General Labor Union). The revolt of the Fascists had set Spain on the 
road to a social revolution.

This same event reveals that the Anarcho-Syndicalist workers of 
Spain not only know how to fight, but that they are filled with that 
great constructive spirit derived from their many years of Socialist 
education. It is the great merit of Libertarian Socialism in Spain, 
which now finds expression in the C.N.T. and F.A.I., that since the days 
of the First International it has trained the workers in that spirit 
which treasures freedom above all else and regards the intellectual 
independence of its adherents as the basis of its existence. The 
libertarian labor movement in Spain has never lost itself in the 
labyrinth of an economic metaphysics which crippled its intellectual 
buoyancy by fatalistic conceptions, as was the case in Germany; nor has 
it unprofitably wasted its energy in the barren routine tasks of 
bourgeois parliaments. Socialism was for it a concern of the people, an 
organic growth proceeding from the activity of the masses themselves and 
having its basis in their economic organizations.

Therefore the C.N.T. is not simply an alliance of industrial 
workers like the trade unions in every other country. It embraces within 
its ranks also the syndicates of the peasant and field-workers as well 
as those of the brain workers and the intellectuals. If the Spanish 
peasants are now fighting shoulder to shoulder with city workers against 
Fascism, it is the result of the great work of Socialist education which 
has been performed by the C.N.T. and its forerunners. Socialists of all 
schools, genuine liberals and bourgeois anti-fascists who have had an 
opportunity to observe on the spot have thus far passed only one 
judgment on the creative capacity of the C.N.T. and have accorded to 
its constructive labors the highest admiration. Not one of them could 
help extolling the natural intelligence, the thoughtfulness and 
prudence, and above all the unexampled tolerance with which the workers 
and peasants of the C.N.T. have gone about their difficult task. 1
Workers, peasants, technicians and men of science had come together for 
cooperative work, and in three months gave an entirely new character to 
the whole economic life of Catalonia.

In Catalonia today three-fourths of the land is collectivized and 
cooperatively cultivated by the workers' syndicates. In this each 
community presents a type by itself and adjusts its internal affairs in 
its own way, but settles its economic questions through the agency of 
its Federation. Thus there is preserved the possibility of free 
enterprise, inciting new ideas and mutual stimulation. One-fourth of the 
country is in the hands of small peasant proprietors, to whom has been 
left the free choice between joining the collectives or continuing their 
family husbandry. In many instances their small holdings have even been 
increased in proportion to the size of their families. In Aragon an 
overwhelming majority of the peasants declared for collective 
cultivation. There are in that province over four hundred collective 
farms, of which about ten are under the control of the Socialist U.G.T., 
while all the rest are conducted by syndicates of the C.N.T. Agriculture 
has made such advances there that in the course of a year forty per cent 
of the formerly untilled land has been brought under cultivation. In the 
Levante, in Andalusia and Castile, also, collective agriculture under 
the management of the syndicates is making constantly greater advances. 
In numerous smaller communities a Socialist form of life has already 
become naturalized, the inhabitants no longer carrying on exchange by 
means of money, but satisfying their needs out of the product of their 
collective industry and conscientiously devoting the surplus to their 
comrades fighting at the front.

In most of the rural collectives individual compensation for work 
performed has been retained, and the further upbuilding of the new 
system postponed until the termination of the war, which at present 
claims the entire strength of the people. In these the amount of the 
wages is determined by the size of the families. The economic reports in 
the daily bulletins of the C.N.T. are extremely interesting, with their 
accounts of the building up of the collectives and their technical 
development through the introduction of machines and chemical 
fertilizers, which had been almost unknown before. The agricultural 
collectives in Castile alone have during the past year spent more than 
two million pasetas for this purpose. The great task of collectivizing 
the land was made much easier after the rural federations of the U.G.T. 
joined the general movement. In many communities all affairs are 
arranged by delegates of the C.N.T. and the U.G.T., bringing about a 
rapprochement of the two organizations which culminated in an alliance 
of the workers in the two organizations.

But the workers' syndicates have made their most astounding 
achievements in the field in industry, since they took into their hands 
the administration of industrial life as a whole. In Catalonia in the 
course of a year the railroads were fitted out with a complete modern 
equipment, and in punctuality the service reached a point that had been 
hitherto unknown. The same advances were achieved in the entire 
transport system, in the textile industry, in machine construction, in 
building, and in the small industries. But in the war industries the 
syndicates have performed a genuine miracle. By the so-called neutrality 
pact the Spanish Government was prevented from importing from abroad any 
considerable amount of war materials. But Catalonia before the Fascist 
revolt not a single plant for the manufacture of army equipment. The 
first concern, therefore, was to remake whole industries to meet the war 
demands. A hard task for the syndicates, which already had in their 
hands full setting up of a new social order. But they perfumed it with 
an energy and a technical efficiency that can be explained only by the 
workers and their boundless readiness to make sacrifices for their 
cause. Men toiled in the factories twelve and fourteen hours a day to 
bring the great work to completion. Today Catalonia possesses 283 huge 
plants which are operating day and night in the production of war 
materials, so that the fronts may be kept supplied. At present Catalonia 
is providing for the greater part of all war demands. Professor Andres 
Oltmares declared in the course of an article that in this field the 
workers' syndicates of Catalonia "had accomplished in seven weeks as 
much as France did in fourteen months after the outbreak of the World 
War."

But that is not all by a great deal. The unhappy war brought into 
Catalonia an overwhelming flood of fugitives from all the war-swept 
districts in Spain; their number has today grown to a million. Over 
fifty per cent of the sick and wounded in the hospitals of Catalonia are 
not Catalonians. One understands, therefore, with what a task the 
workers' syndicates were confronted in the meeting of all these demands. 
Of the re-organization of the whole educational system by the teachers' 
groups in the C.N.T., the associations for the protection of works of 
art, and a hundred other matters we cannot even make mention here.

During this same time the C.N.T. was maintaining 120,000 of its 
militia, who were fighting on all fronts. No other organization has thus 
far made such sacrifices of life and limb as the C.N.T.-F.A.I. In its 
heroic stand against Fascism it has lost a lot of its most distinguished 
fighters, among them Francisco Asco and Buenaventura Durutti, whose epic 
greatness made him the hero of the Spanish people.

Under these circumstances it is, perhaps, understandable that the 
syndicates have not thus far been able to bring to completion their 
great task of social reconstruction, and for the time being were unable 
to give their full attention to the organization of consumption. The 
war, the possession by the Fascist armies of important sources of raw 
materials, the German and Italian invasion, the hostile attitude of 
foreign capital, the onslaughts of the counter-revolution in the country 
itself, which, significantly, was befriended this time by Russia and the 
Communist Party of Spain--all this and many other things have compelled 
the syndicates to postpone many great and important tasks until the war 
is brought to a victorious conclusion. But by taking the land and the 
industrial plants under their own management they have taken the first 
and most important step on the road to Socialism. Above all, they have 
proved that the workers, even without the capitalist, are able to carry 
on production and to do it better than a lot of profit-hungry 
entrepreneurs. Whatever the outcome of the bloody war in Spain may be, 
to have given this great demonstration remains the indisputable service 
of the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalists, whose heroic example has opened for 
the Socialist movement new outlooks for the future.

If the Anarcho-Syndicalists are striving to implant in the working 
classes in every country an understanding of this new form of 
constructive Socialism, and to show them that they must, today, give to 
their economic fighting organizations the forms to enable them during a 
general economic crisis to carry through the work of Socialist 
upbuilding, this does not mean that these forms must everywhere be cut 
to the same pattern. In every country there are special conditions which 
are intimately intergrown with its historical development, its 
traditions, and its peculiar psychological assumptions. The great 
superiority of Federalism is, indeed, just that it takes these important 
matters into account and does not insist on a uniformity that does 
violence to free thought, and forces on men from without things contrary 
to their inner inclinations.

Kropotkin once said that, taking England as an example, there 
existed three great movements which, at the time of a revolutionary 
crisis would enable the workers to carry through a complete overturn of 
social economy: trades unionism, the cooperative organizations, and the 
movement for municipal Socialism; provided that they had a fixed goal in 
view and worked together according to a definite plan. The workers must 
learn that, not only must their social liberation be their own work, but 
that liberation was possible only if they themselves attended to the 
constructive preliminaries instead of leaving the task to the 
politicians, who were in no way fitted for it. And above all they must 
understand that however different the immediate preliminaries for their 
liberation might be in different countries, the effect of capitalist 
exploitation are everywhere the same and they must, therefore, give to 
their efforts the necessary international character.

Above all they must not tie up these efforts with the interests of 
the national states, as has, unfortunately, happened in most countries 
hitherto. The world of organized labor must pursue its own ends, as it 
has its own interests to defend, and these are not identical with the 
state or those of the possessing classes. A collaboration of workers and 
employes such as was advocated by the Socialist Party and the trade 
unions in Germany after the World War can only result in the workers 
being condemned to the role of the poor Lazarus, who must be content to 
eat the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table. Collaboration is 
possible only where the ends and, most importantly of all, the interests 
are the same.

No doubt some small comforts may sometimes fall to the share of 
the workers when the bourgeoisie of their country attain some advantage 
over that of another country; but this always happens at the cost of 
their own freedom and the economic oppression of other peoples. The 
worker in England, France, Holland, and so on, participates to some 
extent in the profits which, without efforts on their part, fall into 
the laps of the bourgeoisie of his country from the unrestrained 
exploitation of colonial peoples; but sooner or later there comes the 
time when these people, too, wake up, and he has to pay all the more 
dearly for the small advantages he has enjoyed. Events in Asia will show 
this still more clearly in the near future. Small gains arising for 
increased opportunity of employment and higher wages may accrue to the 
worker in a successful state from the carving out of new markets at the 
cost of others; but at the same time their brothers on the other side of 
the border have to pay for them by unemployment and the lowering of 
their standard of living. The result is an ever widening rift in the 
international labor movement, which not even the loveliest resolutions 
by international congresses can put out of existence. By this rift the 
liberation of the workers from the yoke of wage-slavery is pushed 
further and further into the distance. As long as the worker ties up his 
interests with those of the bourgeoisie of his country instead of with 
those of his class, he must logically also take in his stride all the 
results of that relationship. He must stand ready to fight the wars of 
the possessing classes for the retention and extension of their markets, 
and to defend any injustice they may perpetrate on other peoples. The 
Socialist press of Germany was merely being consistent when, at the time 
of the World War, they urged the annexation of foreign territory. This 
was merely the inevitable result of the intellectual attitude and the 
methods which the political labor parties had pursued for a long time 
before the war. Only when the workers in every country shall come to 
understand clearly that their interests are everywhere the same, and out 
of this understanding learn to act together, will the effective basis be 
laid for the international liberation of the working class.

Every time has its particular problems and its own peculiar 
methods of solving these problems. The problem that is set for our time 
is that of freeing man from the curse of economic exploitation and 
political and social enslavement. The era of political revolution is 
over, and where such still occur they do not alter in the least the 
bases of the capitalist social order. On the one hand it becomes 
constantly clearer that bourgeois democracy is so degenerate that it is 
no longer capable of offering effective resistance to the threat of 
Fascism. On the other hand political Socialism has lost itself so 
completely on the dry channels of bourgeois politics that it no longer 
has any sympathy with the genuinely Socialistic education of the masses 
and never rises above the advocacy of petty reforms. But the development 
of capitalism and the modern big state have brought us today to a 
situation where we are driving on under full sail toward a universal 
catastrophe. The last World War and its economic and social 
consequences, which are today working more and more disastrously, and 
which have grown into a definite danger to the very existence of all 
human culture, are sinister signs of the times which no man of insight 
can misinterpret. It therefore concerns us today to reconstruct the 
economic life of the peoples from the ground up and build it up anew in 
the spirit of Socialism. But only the producers themselves are fitted 
for this task, since they are the only value-creating element in society 
out of which a new future can arise. Theirs must be the task of freeing 
labor from all the fetters which economic exploitation has fastened on 
it, of freeing society from all the institutions and procedures of 
political power, and of opening the way to an alliance of free groups of 
men and women based on cooperative labor and a planned administration 
of things in the interests of the community. To prepare the toiling 
masses in city and country for this great goal and to bind them together 
as a militant force is the objective of modern Anarcho-Syndicalism, and 
in this its whole purpose is exhausted.

Notes


1 Here are just a few opinions of foreign journalists who have no 
personal connection with the Anarchist movement. Thus, Andrea Oltmares, 
professor in the University of Geneva, in the course of an address of 
some length, said:"In the midst of the civil war the Anarchists have proved 
themselves to be political organizers of the first rank. They kindled in 
everyone the required sense of responsibility, and knew how, by eloquent 
appeals, to keep alive the spirit of sacrifice for the general welfare 
of the people.
	"As a Social Democrat I speak here with inner joy and sincere 
admiration of my experiences in Catalonia. The anti-capitalist 
transformation took place here without their having to resort to a 
dictatorship. The members of the syndicates are their own masters and 
carry on the production and the distribution of the products of labor 
under their own management, with the advice of technical experts in whom 
they have confidence. The enthusiasm of the workers is so great that 
they scorn any personal advantage and are concerned only for the welfare 
of all."

The well-known anti-Fascist, Carlo Roselli, who before Mussolini's 
accession to power was Professor of Economics in the University of 
Genoa, put his judgment into the following words:"In three months Catalonia has been able to set up a new social 
order on the ruins of an ancient system. This is chiefly due to the 
Anarchists, who have revealed a quite remarkable sense of proportion, 
realistic understanding, and organizing ability...all the revolutionary 
forces of Catalonia have united in a program of Syndicalist-Socialist 
character: socialization of large industry; recognition of the small 
proprietor, workers' control...Anarcho-Syndicalism, hitherto so despised, 
has revealed itself as a great constructive force...I am not an Anarchist, 
but I regard it as my duty to express here my opinion of the Anarchists 
of Catalonia, who have all too often been represented to the world as a 
destructive, if not criminal, element. I was with them at the front, in 
the trenches, and I have learned to admire them. The Catalonian 
Anarchists belong to the advance guard of the coming revolution. A new 
world was born with them, and it is a joy to serve that world."

And Fenner Brockway, Secretary of the I.L.P. in England who 
traveled to Spain after the May events in Catalonia (1937), expressed 
his impressions in the following words:"I was impressed by the strength of the C.N.T. It was unnecessary 
to tell me that it was the largest and most vital of the working-class 
organizations in Spain. The large industries were clearly, in the main, 
in the hands of the C.N.T.--railways, road transport, shipping, 
engineering, textiles, electricity, building, agriculture. At Valencia 
the U.G.T. had a larger share of control than at Barcelona, but 
generally speaking the mass of manual workers belonged to the C.N.T. The 
U.G.T. membership was more of the type of the 'white-collar' worker...I 
was immensely impressed by the constructive revolutionary work which is 
being done by the C.N.T. Their achievement of workers' control in 
industry is an inspiration. One could take the example of the railways 
or engineering or textiles...There are still some Britishers and Americans 
who regard the Anarchists of Spain as impossible, undisciplined, 
uncontrollable. This is poles away from the truth. The Anarchists of 
Spain, through the C.N.T., are doing one of the biggest constructive 
jobs ever done by the working class. At the front they are fighting 
Fascism. Behind the front they are actually constructing the new 
Workers' Society. They see that the war against Fascism and the carrying 
through of the Social Revolution are inseparable. Those who have seen 
and understand what they are doing must honor them and be grateful to 
them. They are resisting Fascism. They are at the same time creating the 
New Workers' Order which is the only alternative to Fascism. That is 
surely the biggest things now being done by the workers in any part of 
the world." And in another place: "The great solidarity that existed 
among the Anarchists was due to each individual relying on his own 
strength and not depending on leadership. The organizations must, to be 
successful, be combined with a free-thinking people; not a mass, but 
free individuals."


     From : Spunk.org

Events :
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     Chapter 4 -- Publication : November 30, 1937

     Chapter 4 -- Added : February 09, 2017

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