CHAPTER V. The FAI and the CNT meet

There was no doubt that the FAI had a significant influence on the CNT, but the relationship between the two organizations was unclear. That is why the FAI’s Tierra y Libertad emphasized disagreements in the brief article that it ran about the international rally that we discussed in the previous chapter.

“The voice of the FAI was not heard there, which would have been the voice of Iberian anarchism. It was absent, and quite absent. In Spain, the anarchist voice has more right than any to be heard at these meetings of the CNT and AIT.” [281]

On June 10, one day before the CNT Congress was due to begin, the FAI held its first Peninsular Conference in Madrid. One hundred twenty county representatives were present. The Conference resolved to do the following:

1. Conduct a propaganda tour throughout the Peninsula, beginning on August 1.

2. Make the weekly Tierra y Libertad into the daily newspaper of the FAI, coming out of Madrid.

3. Affirm anarchism within the CNT. [282]

Conference participants also discussed the prior behavior of the Peninsular Committee. Their declaration on the matter stated:

After a discussion of the flawed conduct of the FAI’s Peninsular Committee between October 1930 and January 1931, we have drawn the following conclusions:

That comrades Elizalde, Hernández, and Sirvent assumed powers exceeding those assigned to them as members of the commission for revolutionary preparation and did not respect the resolution adopted at the Valencia meeting against collaboration with politicians from any camp. We recognize that it would be excessive to enumerate all the details that make up the matter; it is enough to extract the real essence of the event.

Here we announce the applicable sanctions, which will be the beginning of the solution that we will try to give to this irritating incident: We resolve that we will not tolerate another divergence from the paths agreed to by the FAI at the whim of any of its members, whatever his situation within the organization may be. Likewise, anyone who dares to repeat this offense will be removed from their posts and will have to wait, in accordance with their future behavior, for the collective to return the trust in them that they violated.

Regarding the comrades that have created this circumstance, whom we have named, we believe it fitting that they cease to occupy posts in the anarchist organization for some time.

The additional details of the intimate contact that they had with the political elements, while censurable, are a part of the collaboration that we reject. We also cannot accept any attempt to justify their error by pointing to aggravating circumstances. They acted against a decision of the organization that they represent. Furthermore, a prior consultation with the anarchist bodies would have prevented the unfavorable national and international sensation that the collectivity has had to suffer.[283]

By purifying its organization in this way, the FAI put closure on the confusing period of political conspiracies that took place during the Monarchy’s last moments and renewed the possibility of a broad affirmation of anarchism. The matter that the FAI discussed and resolved would also be central to the debates at the CNT’s Third Congress, which occurred between June 11 and June 16 in Madrid’s Conservatorio.

The last time that the CNT had been able to hold a Congress was in 1919. During the intervening years, meetings or national conferences governed the Confederation’s organizational life, which could in no way substitute for a Congress. By 1931, the CNT was suffering greatly from the lack of regular Congresses. The need to make decisions while underground had created undemocratic and destructive vices within the organization. Indeed, the greenhouse of the underground had incubated the CNT’s internal crisis.

While clarifying the organization’s political stance was already a very complex task for the Congress, additional factors made its work still more difficult and even jeopardized the Confederation itself. We have seen how the CNT grew to have one million members after only two months of public activity. Among these members, there were workers who were sincerely impressed by the CNT’s heroic legend. But there were also some who were highly politicized and intended to mine the organization for recruits for their own political groups. Given that, and the debate between the anarchists and union activists that had unfolded for more than four years, it was easy to anticipate a negative and divided Congress. The fact that it was neither of these things, but rather a constructive workers’ event, affirmed the strength of the working class and rebuffed the political parties who hoped to lead it. The Congress had to consider a lengthy agenda that included many important points: the National Committee’s Report, which would review a long period of activities; the Reorganization Plan, based on the Federations of Industries counter-posed to the Sindicatos Unicos [industrial union groups]; national propaganda campaigns and attracting the working class and peasantry to the unions; salary demands, shortening the workday, rejection of income taxes, and ways to fight forced unemployment; CNT publications and how to improve their coordination with other efforts and make them more effective propaganda tools; formulation of reports for the AIT’s Fourth Congress; and the CNT’s position on the convocation of the Constituent Assembly and the politico-legal-economic demands to present to it. A total of 511 delegates representing unions from 219 localities discussed the agenda. Although it is difficult to calculate the total number represented, given irregularities in the payment of dues and the inexperience of many of the recently organized unions, it is not an exaggeration to say that 800,000 workers and peasants were represented there. One important characteristic was that delegates carried a mandate from their unions, which recorded the number of members represented and topics to advance for consideration at the Congress. Angel Pestaña opened the ceremony in the name of the National Committee. He gave a short speech on the importance of the Congress and the CNT’s trajectory since its Second Congress in 1919. As AIT secretary, Rudolf Rocker greeted the Congress in the name of the anarcho-syndicalist workers of the world:

The greatest danger facing the CNT today is the democratic danger. The Republic offers workers the promise of improvements that are impossible to obtain within the capitalist regime. And there is the risk that the masses will accept its promises. But you already know that democracies only sustain the old capitalist apparatus, not destroy it. They plan to improve capitalism and, when the workers accept their pledges, they are diverted from their real path. Therefore, the danger for Spanish anarcho-syndicalists is the likely diversion of workers toward Republican democracy.

Possibilities unsuspected until now are opening up daily before the global proletariat. But we have to work quickly, energetically, and courageously to seize them. The workers have to fight for the realization of their aspirations, which are nothing other than establishing libertarian communism through social revolution.

Francesc Isgleas as well as Juan Ramón and Gabriel González (the latter two were secretaries of the Sevilla Unions) presided over the Congress Committee. Once the agenda was passed, the Asturian delegates asked the body to send a group to the Ministry of Labor in support of their effort to secure a seven-hour workday in the mines as well as a salary increase. “The goal,” they stated, “is to put pressure on Largo Caballero, who is the enemy of the CNT’s mining union in Asturias and the protector of the armed Socialist scabs. If the meeting is a failure, the CNT will take radical measures.

The striking miners must not be defeated.” The conference voted to make Miguel Abos, Ramón Acín, José López, José G. Trabal, and Angel Pestaña members of the commission.

There was a debate in the third session about whether or not to accept the FAI as an optional entity at the Congress. FAI members in the Catalan Regional Committee preferred to withdraw their motion before having the FAI accepted with limited rights. [284] There were strong differences of opinions about the matter and participants failed to come to a conclusion.

The National Committee’s report was extensive and took up part of the third and fourth sessions. Speaking for the National Committee, Francisco Arin stated that “the National Committee was appointed in June 1930 and that all its actions prior to April 12, 1931 with respect to parties or political figures were authorized by national conferences or meetings. Furthermore, let it be understood that the National Committee never surpassed its authority with regard to CNT decisions and was always faithful to the Confederation’s revolutionary and anti-political stance in its relations with political elements.”

“Delegates criticized the National Committee harshly [after its report]. They accused it of political collaboration, although it was evident that the Confederals and FAIistas had had good revolutionary intentions in their dealings with political figures. The National Committee roundly denied any participation in the Pact of San Sebastián [285] and asserted that certain contacts were maintained only because they had been established by the previous National Committee.”

The discussion continued in the fourth session. There was a debate about whether the CNT had collaborated with the political sector and what agreements had been made with Lluís Companys. Juan Peiró responded to insinuations made regarding the latter issue by saying that “Companys did not ask for three months of peace from the Confederation [during which it would not strike], but a half year. We made no compromises with him. On the contrary, we explicitly rejected his request.” Several Catalans asserted that their unions had held protest strikes in the early days of the new Republic, “without any CNT committee or any of the new rulers—such as Companys—claiming that they were breaking a deal.” Arin, Peiró, and Pestaña also spoke. Delegates ultimately concluded that the National Committee had not abused its power, and they ratified that later, but they also appointed a new National Committee, which “Pestaña interpreted as a rebuke.”

Angel Pestaña inopportunely presented an important proposal during the fourth session, whose significance escaped the Congress due to the prevailing excitement. His proposed that the CNT “ask the Republic (when it becomes federal) to declare Spanish Morocco a region with the same rights as the peninsular regions.” The Congress rejected this, although the issue was a source of contention. The anarchists at the Congress saw Pestaña’s initiative as a clear attempt to negotiate a sort of truce with the Republican government. To even suggest contact with the government was like mentioning “rope in the house of a hanged man” and only increased suspicions about Pestaña’s collaborationism. For the anarchists, it was inconceivable to accept asking the federal Republican government to consider Spanish Morocco another region. To ask for was to negotiate and Spanish was to accept the government’s colonialist policies. The anarchists who replied to Pestaña (including García Oliver, who was representing the Reus unions) rejected both of these things. The oppression suffered by Rifis [286] was identical to that of other peoples subject to capitalism and colonialism: the Spanish working class was colonized and exploited by the same forces that dominate the Rifis.

What was important was uniting the workers of the world in a joint struggle against the state and capitalism. The CNT would take this struggle to the Rif not to insert the Rifi into Spain’s authoritarian structures but to work with them to make a social revolution. [287]

The agrarian question was another important issue at the Congress. In fact, representatives from many peasant unions attended and the Andalusians had even come in their work clothes in order to illustrate the miserable conditions that they had to endure. The CNT’s Peasant Federation would advance the following program:

1. Expropriate all large estates, reserves, and arable lands without compensation and declare them social property.

2. Confiscate reserve livestock, seeds, implements, and machinery, which is the wrongful property of the landowners.

3. Proportional and free delivery in usufruct of these lands and effects to the peasant unions, for their use and direct administration.

4. Abolish contributions, taxes, debts, and mortgage charges that burden small landowners who do not exploit manual labor beyond the family unit.

5. Suppression of income in money or kind that small tenant farmers, colonos, leased tenants, etc. must pay to owner parasites or their intermediaries.

The Congress is committed to and emphasizes the revolutionary preparation of the peasant masses as well as their capacity to manage agricultural production themselves.

The presentation on the CNT’s Reorganization Plan was read during the eighth session. The reorganization would take place on the basis of Federations of Industry. The plan’s author was Juan Peiró and, as noted earlier, he premised his argument on the national and international evolution capitalism.

Trades would federate at local, county, provincial, regional, and national levels and there would be a National Federation of each respective industry. The national committees of the trades would form a National Committee of the Economy and the CNT National Committee would operate above all of them. We have already mentioned this plan’s bureaucratic character. We now enter the debate more fully.

The most important speeches in this debate were made by: García Oliver (Reus), against; Peiró (Mataró), in favor; Alberola (Gironella), against; San Agustín (Zaragoza), in favor; Santander, against; and Emilio Mira (Alcoy’s Oficios Varios), in favor.

Here are their arguments:

Santander: “If Spain is more agricultural than industrial, why should there be Federations of Industry? We are undeveloped, industrially speaking. With the exception of the Public Service monopolies, there is no industrial development in Spain.... And, even if that type of capitalist concentration does exists, should we, who have followed a different trajectory than the Marxists, different because we apply our philosophy to all things; should we now abandon our principles and give in so easily simply because the bourgeoisie economy develops in that way?”

Juan Peiró: “If the bourgeoisie of a particular industry unites to defend itself, not as industrialists but as a class, shouldn’t the workers also concentrate themselves and form a united front against the bourgeoisie? My reply is categorical, and perhaps that’s my sin.”

José Alberola: “The supporters of the Federations of Industry embrace it because they’ve lost confidence in our ultimate goals and only have faith in the gears of the machinery. That machine doesn’t cultivate strength but consumes it, and in that sense we’ll create a mentality opposed to everything implied by individual initiative.... We defend the Confederation; we work in accordance with its basic principles. We have an ideal, which will sooner or later overwhelm the capitalist system. We do not accept anything resembling statism, because all forms of statism invariably become acts of coercion.” Emilio Mira: “Capitalism has political-economic as well as militaristic institutions. It can say to us: ‘So, you want to abolish the state, private property, and the exploitation of man; what body, what organization, what ideal of social life do you counter-pose to our system that would be so much better?’ Against the supposed economic harmony of capitalist production, we have to assert the economic harmony of workers’ production through Industrial Federations and, for their defense in the political and social terrains, the Confederation.”

García Oliver: “... we cannot accept the Federations of Industry because they carry the germ of disintegration within themselves. They kill the spirit of the masses, who we have ready to go into action against the state. CNT hasn’t failed at all or, if it has, it is only because of the lack of revolutionary intelligence among its most distinguished militants.... The Confederation has an extremely important role to play right now. The revolution has been strangled and the Confederation would have to be prepared... [the speaker was interrupted for exceeding his allocated time to comment].” Participants voted on the matter and the CNT accepted the National Federations of Industry by 302,000 in favor against 90,671 against.

During the twelfth session, attendees approved a protest against the state of emergency in Andalusia and also unanimously ratified the CNT’s principles and aims (which had been approved at 1919 Congress). They also had to consider “The position of the CNT toward the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.” The Congress resolved “... the CNT must always practice direct action, push the people on a clearly revolutionary path toward libertarian communism, and convert the political event that has occurred in Spain into a revolutionary event that is fundamentally transformative of all political and economic values.... To do so, the CNT will immediately and energetically devote itself to organizing its revolutionary forces and to imminent, anti-electoral action.” [288]