January 1937

From January 1937 onwards the CNT Information and Propaganda Bureau organized a regular series of lectures in the Coliseum cinema in Barcelona. The first lecture, delivered by Federica Montseny on 3 January 1937, on militant anarchy and Spanish reality, was a prime example of chauvinistic political demagogery with nothing to commend it from an anarchist perspective. It does, however, provide a fascinating insight into the thinking of the CNT and FAI leaders in relation to the war, government and revolution from the vantage point of power. She explained to her audience that the anarchists had entered the government to prevent the anarchist movement from being ‘ousted from the leadership of the revolution’ in order to carry it further beyond the war, and also to oppose any dictatorial tendency, from wherever it might come.[82]

The agonizing decision facing the popular militias in the meantime was whether or not to accept the militarization being pressed upon them by their own comrades of the higher committees in the rearguard. Delegates from the different units of the Durruti Column in the Gelsa sector met in mid-January to protest against the decision to militarize the columns on the Aragón front. Their problem was not one of organization or discipline, simply a lack of weapons and ammunition. They also drew up what would be an acceptable alternative to the anarchist volunteers. On 16 January, they issued a statement that appeared in the Lerida paper Acracia which they claimed spoke for every century in the Durruti Column:

“… Apparently the government is making the provision of equipment conditional upon our militarization … According to what the committees themselves say, they cannot give us any assurances that the Madrid government will supply us with the equipment even if we do militarize. That being the case, the trespass against our principles could be rewarded with nothing more than an empty promise.”

The Iron Column also called a meeting of its militants to discuss the militarization plans. The strength of feeling among the anarchist fighters on the question of militarization was captured in a heartfelt and powerful protest to present and future generations of libertarians by an ‘unknown uncontrollable’ of the Iron Column:

“… And so, with our comrades at our sides, and imagining that there was some purpose to our struggle, we went willingly to war and even accepted death with pleasure. But when you are among the military where there are only orders and ranks; when you see in your hands the miserable pay with which you can scarcely sustain your family in the rear and you see your lieutenant, captain, colonel earning three times as much: four times as much, ten times as much as you, though possessed of neither enthusiasm, nor of greater acumen or greater courage than you, life turns sour because you see that this is no revolution, but profit for a few from a wretched situation which merely works to the detriment of the people… The militarists, all militarists — there are wrathful ones on our side — have surrounded us. Yesterday we were the masters of everything. Today they are. The Popular Army, popular only inasmuch as it consists of people, belongs to the government, and the government commands, the government ordains. The people have to obey and constant obedience is required of them…”[83]

On 18 January the Catalan Generalidad passed 58 decrees aimed at further containing the advances of the revolutionary working class. Juan Comorera, appointed Councilor for Food in December, set about abolishing the CNT run Supply Committees that had kept Barcelona provisioned with flour. Franz Borkenau, a visitor to the Catalan capital in January 1937, described the situation:

‘He restored private commerce in bread, simply and completely. There was, in January, not even a system of rationing in Barcelona. Workers were left simply to get their bread, with wages, which had hardly changed since May, at increased prices, as well as they could. In practice it meant that the women had to form queues from four o’clock in the morning onwards. The resentment in the working class districts was naturally acute, the more so as the scarcity of bread rapidly increased after Comorera had taken office.’[84]

The opinion of many anarchists in the rearguard was that militarization was, on the whole, a good thing. Camillo Berneri, a delegate to the Defense Council, interviewed by L′Espagne Nouvelle, commented that the militias had made great advances and learned much from their experiences of the previous six months:

‘Transport has begun to be rationalized, roads are being repaired, equipment is more abundant and better distributed, and into the mind of the column (the Italian section of the Ascaso Column) is slipping the idea: the necessity of a co-ordinating command.

‘We are forming divisions, and this will complete the economic plan of war, and the best known representatives of the CNT and the FAI have made themselves its supporters. In fact, it was these two organizations that first proposed a united command in order to be able to exert decisive pressure on the weak points of the enemy lines …

“So, there is some good in militarization?”

“Certainly”, replied Berneri with conviction, “but there is a distinction to be made: there is on the one side military formalism which is not only ridiculous, but is also useless and dangerous — and on the other side there is self-discipline…

‘For my part, I support a legitimate compromise: we must neither lapse into military formalism nor into superstitious anti-militarism. By accepting and achieving the reforms imposed on us by the nature of things, we shall, by this self-same means, be in a position to resist the maneuvers of Madrid and Moscow, which are attempting to impose, under the pretext of militarization, their military hegemony over the Spanish revolution, in order to transform it into the instrument of their political hegemony. As for myself, I consider it a mistake to talk, as do certain CNT-FAI representatives of an overall or “supreme” command instead of unity of command. That is to say, general co-ordination in matters of the control of the armed struggle. Their intentions are good, but the term used leads to dangerous confusions!... All things considered, therefore, the reforms needed in the militia, in my opinion, would be the following: a clear distinction between military command and political control, in the field of the preparation and execution of the operations of war; strict fulfillment of orders received, but maintenance of certain fundamental rights: that of electing and recalling officers.’[85]