Saku Pinta

Introduction

Council Communism is often regarded as a current within the revolutionary Marxist tradition that bears a close resemblance to what some now refer to as ‘class struggle’ anarchism[470] and is routinely considered to belong to a broader ‘libertarian communist’ tendency.[471] In so far as those anarchist currents which embrace a revolutionary class politics are delineated from individualist or other variants, the common emphasis on direct action and forms of self-organization as the prefigurative organs of revolutionary change, distrust of bureaucracy and officialdom, and critique of both reformism and Bolshevism all lend credence to suggestions of convergent perspectives between councilism and class struggle anarchisms. Moreover, much like the broadly defined anarchist tradition, Council Communism became submerged during the Second World War — and overshadowed during the political climate of the postwar bipolar system[472] — only to resurface with the upsurge of antisystemic movements of the new Left and the post-68 era.

However, while theoretical similarities have been acknowledged, historically-situated examinations of the evolving relationship between anarchist and Marxist praxis have been sorely lacking in Left and labor historiography.[473] An approach sensitive to historical conditions and concrete political manifestations may provide some insight into the relationships between the ‘red’ and ‘black’ largely missing from what strictly analytical or normative approaches can tell us. Moreover, they may also serve as correctives to simplistic treatments counter posing a singular, ‘capital-M’ Marxist bête noire to a more varied and robust anarchism, or vice versa. Indeed, the view of ideologies as dynamic, conceptual products of their social, political, and economic environments, morphing in relation to changed circumstances, is an approach gaining ground in contemporary political theory.[474]

This chapter will examine Council Communist perspectives on anarchosyndicalist participation in the Spanish Civil War and Revolution 1936–1939 through the writings of the American Group of Council Communists and its most outstanding theorists Paul Mattick and Karl Korsch. This conflict represents a pivotal episode in the international working-class movement, bookending the interwar period (1918–1939). The anti-Fascist struggle in Spain provided the backdrop against which ideological tensions were dramatically played out, and one in which the political aims and objectives of nearly all political actors involved were subject to revision: some anarchists participated in government, Stalinists actively defended liberal democracy and private property, and sections of the liberal bourgeoisie made common cause with self-styled socialists. The two main councilist journals of this period — Rätecorrespondenz in the Netherlands and International Council Correspondence in the USA — followed the events in Spain closely. In his 1969 introduction to a reprinted collection of the North American Council Communist journal, Paul Mattick reflected on this period, stating that:

The anti-Fascist civil war in Spain, which was immediately a proving ground for World War II, found the council communists quite naturally — despite their Marxist orientation — on the side of the anarcho-syndicalists, even though circumstances compelled the latter to sacrifice their own principles to the protracted struggle against the common Fascist enemy.[475]

The chapter will begin with a brief outline of the origins and development of the Dutch-German Council Communist current, before providing a sketch of the American Group of Council Communists. It will then consider the critical, but sympathetic, support of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists by the American councilists, highlighting the critique of the Popular Front, the positive appraisal of anarchist collectivization, and the main councilist critiques of anarcho-syndicalism in Spain. In conclusion, councilist attitudes to the performance of anarchism in Spain will be discussed in relation to similar self-critiques made by rank and file formations such as La Agrupación de Los Amigos de Durruti (the Friends of Durruti Group). The Friends of Durruti were an anarcho-syndicalist affinity group, formally launched on 17 March 1937, named after the legendary anarcho-syndicalist militant Buenaventura Durruti who was killed in the defense of Madrid in 1936.[476] The group functioned as a Left opposition formation within the two main institutional expressions of anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism in Spain, the CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo; National Confederation of Labor) and FAI (Federación Anarquista Ibérica; Iberian Anarchist Federation), and rose to prominence during the ‘May Days’ of 1937 in Barcelona.[477]

Beyond strictly historical interest, the councilists’ critical appraisal of the revolutionary movement in Spain, and its counterpart within the radical Left of the CNT-FAI, reveals a series of common considerations between revolutionary anarchisms and Marxisms with regards to the dynamics of revolutionary struggle: the limitations of anti-Fascism within the framework of liberal democracy; internationalist perspectives on the risks and benefits of extending isolated ‘national’ or regional revolutionary struggles beyond their frontiers; the relationship between mass-based working-class organizations and avant-garde political groupings in pre- and post-revolutionary periods; and finally, the very thorny question of what, exactly, is meant by ‘taking power’?

Workers’ councils and Council Communist praxis

The Dutch-German Council Communist tendency, represents one of the most significant and original revolutionary Marxist tendencies of the interwar period. The best-known Council Communist theorists include Anton Pannekoek, Paul Mattick, Herman Gorter and Otto Rühle, while arguably the most famous and controversial councilist activist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was responsible for setting the fire that destroyed the Reichstag building in February 1933 as an act of protest against the Nazis. In the early 1920s, Council Communism had a mass audience and considerable influence within the Dutch and German working-class movement.

The centerpiece of Council Communist theory is the notion that workers’ councils constitute the main unit of revolutionary working-class struggle and the basis on which post-capitalist arrangements should be constructed. In his Workers’ Councils, one of the most widely read expositions of Council Communist ideas, Anton Pannekoek described councils as forms of working-class self-organization rooted in the myriad organs of production. These councils, typically created in situations in which workers attempt to wrest control of their workplaces and communities, would replace parliamentary political institutions and the state with collaborating bodies of recallable delegates responsible for democratically administering production as well as activity in other spheres. This form of organization would amount to a ‘total revolution’ in human affairs and result in the dissolution of the separation between politics and economics under capitalism.[478] Like class struggle anarchists, Council Communists believe that democracy is a sham unless extended to the economy and other areas of social life.

From these premises, the Council Communists developed a critique of bureaucracy and mediated forms of political action as running directly counter to the emancipatory aims of the workers’ movement. As Rachleff wrote in his 1976 study of councilist history and political theory:

The councilists … rejected the party structure because it recapitulated the capitalist division between mental and manual labor, between order-givers and order-takers. With their emphasis on the importance of the connection between the means and ends of the class struggle, they recognized that socialism — workers’ self-management of production and society — cannot be achieved through a form of organization that hindered self-emancipation. Rather than stimulating the capabilities of workers, parties function to stifle them.[479]

Council Communists also rejected the trade union form, for similar reasons, arguing that conventional unions had failed as instruments of revolution, being integrated into the functioning of advanced capitalism as agents of social control and collaborationist capital-labor mediation. By acting above or on behalf of the workers, the councilists reasoned that both trade union and party officials restrained and usurped the creative potential and agency of the working class. In doing so, a bureaucratic stratum formed, developing and defending its own privileges and class interests as the managers, rather than gravediggers, of capitalism. These hierarchical organizations were argued to be obstacles to human emancipation, a goal that could only be realized through collective social action and institutions powered ‘from below.’

From Left radicalism to Council Communism, 1900–1924

The ideas outlined above were not considered as abstract theoretical positions. Rather, councilist ideas were informed through the study of mass workers’ struggles — particularly in the emergence of workers’ councils (soviets) in Russia in 1905 and again in 1917, as well as the appearance of councils in Germany, Hungary and Italy in the uprisings, factory occupations, military mutinies, and insurrections that swept central and southern Europe in the years immediately following the First World War.[480]

In Germany and the Netherlands, Council Communist praxis originated in the early twentieth century from a radical Left minority in the German Social Democratic Party[481] and the Dutch ‘Tribunist’ group, both of whom collaborated extensively.[482] Perhaps the most important proponent of this radical Left faction was the German-Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. Her writings, especially Reform or Revolution,[483] first published in 1900, and her 1906 The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions,[484] helped lay the intellectual foundations of the Left radical and, later, councilist currents. Luxemburg’s famous libertarian dictum — directed as a criticism of Lenin in the early stages of the Russian Revolution — presaged later conflicts between the heirs of this radical current and the Bolsheviks. ‘Freedom,’ she maintained, ‘is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently … its effectiveness vanishes when “freedom” becomes a special privilege.’[485]

Frequently denounced as an ‘anarchist deviation,’ Broue, in his study of the German revolution (1917–1923), noted that ‘The German left radicals had been in conflict for years with the authoritarian organization of their own party.’[486] Intraparty divisions within the social democratic camp came to a head during the crisis on the political Left provoked by the First World War, and, at a later stage, the overall reconfiguration of the international working-class movement in the years following the Russian Revolution in 1917. Those who had maintained anti-war positions and had welcomed the revolutionary events in Russia formed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD, Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands). Similar to many Western European Communists, the majority of this party held anti-parliamentary and anti-trade union positions. Perhaps initially taking Lenin’s early 1917 revolutionary writings at face value, like his April Theses or State and Revolution[487] – much as many Russian and international anarchists had done during the October revolution[488] — workers and intellectuals in the Dutch-German Communist movement argued that the Russian Communists had revealed the emancipatory potential of the workers’ councils.

A series of bureaucratic maneuvers within the KPD by a small section of the party was successful in capturing important positions in the central committee, and through this influence expelled left-wing branches. The strategic aim of these expulsions centered around efforts to attract members of other, more moderate, parties to the KPD in the hope of building a mass party.[489] The insistence of the Communist International for all affiliated parties to participate in electoral campaigns in their national parliaments as well to work within the trade unions in order to radicalize them were also divisive issues for many Western Communists.[490] For the Dutch-German Communist Left, the function of the trade unions and political parties had already been called into question from their performance before, during and after the war. In response, Lenin’s 1920 polemic, Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder[491] explicitly aimed at destroying the influence of the anti-parliamentary and radical sections of the Communist movement in Western Europe.[492]

The expelled sections of the KPD regrouped to form the Germany Communist Workers Party (KAPD, Kommunistische Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands) in 1920, and participated as an observer group within the Communist International until the Third Congress of that body in 1921. Although increasingly critical, following the KAPD exit from the Comintern councilists engaged in a much more detailed critique of Bolshevism and the Soviet Union.[493] Perhaps the two definitive councilist statements against Bolshevism include Herman Gorter’s 1920 Open Letter to Comrade Lenin[494] and Helmut Wagner’s Theses on Bolshevism.[495] Both writings express the view that conditions in Western Europe precluded the adoption of parliamentary and unionist methods for revolutionary ends. Wagner’s analysis of Bolshevism, which became the standard councilist view, further argued that the Bolshevik Party had carried out a bourgeois revolution in a predominantly agrarian society (rather than a proletarian revolution) against the remnants of Russian feudal absolutism and a weak liberal capitalist class, and installed the revolutionary intelligentsia as masters of a dictatorial party-state.

The program of the KAPD explicitly stated that they were ‘not a party in the traditional sense.’ Rather than participating in the electoral process or seeking to capture state power, the political organization was given a more modest role, namely, uniting and co-ordinating the efforts of the most politically advanced segments of the working-class under a Communist program. The factory organizations or ‘workers’ unions’ (Unionen) were considered as constituting ‘the foundation of the communist society to come’[496] Parallel to the KAPD (peaking in 1920 with some 40,000 members) was the 200,000 strong General Workers’ Union of Germany (AAUD Allgemeine Arbeiter Union Deutschlands), a network of factory organizations modeled on the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Of all early twentieth-century labor organizations, the ‘revolutionary industrial unionism’ of the IWW had the most significant and lasting impact on councilist industrial strategy.[497]

Differences emerged within the councilist Left in the early 1920s.[498] A split from the AAUD, led by Otto Rühle, led to the creation of the AAUE (Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union — Einheitsorganisation), as a political-economic ‘unitary organization.’ Militants of the AAUE denied the necessity of a revolutionary political organization separate from workers’ economic organizations.[499] This underpinned the main debates within the councilist movement regarding the utility of a revolutionary party. Three different positions emerged. Rühle argued that efforts should be directly at forming workplace groups as a synthesis of economic and political organization, and that attempts to form separate political organizations should be abandoned. This position was laid out most clearly in Rühle’s pamphlet The Revolution is Not a Party Affair,[500] and in several respects, resembled that of revolutionary syndicalism.[501] Herman Gorter argued for a revolutionary party and defended the role of the KAPD as a political organization for militants, carrying out propaganda work and linking members in a common organization under a common platform. Pannekoek and Mattick in some ways oscillated between the two positions: with the former settling on a somewhat ‘spontaneist’ perspective which asserted that any outside intervention in working-class struggles would ultimately be harmful,[502] and the later considering these differences (in retrospect) to be of little practical significance.[503]

Despite differences, the conceptions of a Leninist-type party or activity in parliamentary politics were strategies rejected by Council Communists. The councilist notion of a ‘party,’ as ‘a group which share[s] a general common perspective and [seeks] to clarify and publicize the issues of class struggle,’[504] in this sense, did not fundamentally differ from some anarchist conceptions of a revolutionary, anti-parliamentary political organization.[505] In the radical political atmosphere of the Weimar Republic, historian Hans Manfred Bock considered the German Council Communists to be, along with the Föderation der Kommunistischen Anarchisten (FKAD, Federation of Communist Anarchists of Germany) and the Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschlands (FAUD, Free Workers’ Union of Germany), a part of a common, ‘relatively widespread antiauthoritarian movement’ with ‘open borders and fluid crossings and interactions between’ these ‘components of the antiauthoritarian camp.’[506]

Post-1924 Council Communism in the USA

By 1924 the combined membership of councilist organizations in Germany had dwindled to some 2,700 active militants.[507] Those who remained committed to advancing social revolutionary perspectives focused primarily on developing theory and carrying out propaganda and educational work. One such group was the American UnitedWorkers Party, later renamed the Group of Council Communists, formed in 1934 through the initiative of Paul Mattick. Mattick, a former KAPD and AAUD worker-intellectual, emigrated to the USA in 1924, first moving to Benton Harbor, Michigan, later settling in Chicago, Illinois in 1927. Bonacchi writes that German radical émigrés like Mattick:

… saw the U.S. as the strongest capitalist country with the most radical labor tradition (the IWW) … providing the ideal conditions for the rapid development of that class autonomy which in Europe had been handicapped by capitalism’s structural backwardness and by the labor movement’s tradition of reformism.[508]

Indeed, Mattick attributed the formation of autonomous councils of the unemployed in the USA during the Great Depression as creating the conditions for the emergence of a Council Communist movement in that country.[509] Prior to the formation of an explicitly councilist organization, organizing and propaganda related to unemployment issues was conducted through the IWW. Mattick was an active member, and drafted a Germanlanguage revolutionary program for the union in 1933 based on the theories of Henryk Grossman — Die Todeskrise des kapitalistischen Systems und die Aufgaben des Proletariats (The death crisis of the capitalist system and the tasks of the proletariat)[510] — which did not make the impact Mattick anticipated. In 1931 Mattick attempted to revive the Arbeiter-Zeitung newspaper in Chicago, a German-language radical publication famously associated with the Haymarket Martyrs.

As the movement of the unemployed declined, Mattick left the IWW[511] and regrouped with other Council Communists, Wobblies, members of the left-wing faction of the American Proletarian Party, and unemployed workers in 1934 to create the United Workers Party (UWP).[512] This group, with members based in Chicago, Buffalo, Washington D.C., and New York,[513] functioned primarily as a ‘propaganda organization advocating the self-rule of the working class.’[514] The party’s manifesto — World-wide Fascism or World Revolution? – outlined the role of the party, similar to that of the KAPD:

The communist revolutionary party is an instrument of revolution and as such it must serve that purpose. It has no interests separate from the working class, but is only an expression of the fact that minorities become consciously revolutionary earlier than the broad masses … It does not look for power for itself or for any bureaucracy, but works to strengthen the power of the workers councils, Soviets. It is not interested to hold positions, but to place the power in the hands of workers committees, exercised by the workers themselves. It does not seek to lead the workers, but tells the workers to use their own initiative. It is a propaganda organization for Communism, and shows by example how to fight in action.[515]

In October 1934, the UWP began publishing International Council Correspondence. Mattick, who edited the journal, characterized it as a ‘forum for discussion, unhampered by any specific dogmatic point of view, and open to new ideas that had some relevance to the council movement.’[516] Soon after, in 1936, the UWP changed its name to the Group of Council Communists. They explained that since the UWP ‘was not a “party” in the traditional sense, the retention of the word has led to a lot of needless misunderstandings.’[517] In 1938 the journal changed its title to Living Marxism, and in 1942 the title was changed to New Essays. The name changes did not reflect revisions to the journal’s political orientation. A membership decline prompted the first title change to Living Marxism as the journal ‘did not promote the growth of the organization but was practically no more than a vehicle for the elucidation of the ideas of Council Communism.’[518] Mattick wrote that the overall decline of radicalism with the outbreak of the Second World War ‘made the name Living Marxism seem rather pretentious, as well as a hindrance in the search for a wider circulation,’[519] and the journal appeared as New Essays until it ceased publication in 1943. Aside from Mattick, Karl Korsch, a Marxist intellectual who emigrated to the USA in 1936, was perhaps the most prominent regular contributor to the journal. The writings of key figures in the European council movement, like Anton Pannekoek and Otto Rühle, appeared regularly as did translations from their Dutch sister publication Rätekorrespondenz.[520] In keeping with their open attitude to other working-class groups, the journal also published contributions by other figures on the radical Left, notably an article by Max Nomad (formerly a follower of Jan Wacław Machajski) and Daniel Guérin’s ‘Fascist Corporatism’ (a translation from the revolutionary syndicalist journal La Révolution prolétarienne).[521]

The Spanish Civil War and revolution

The events surrounding the Spanish Civil War are well-known and documented, and there is no need to go into any great detail into the causes and outcomes of the conflict. Of note, however, is the way in which the conflict has generally been portrayed, namely, as one between Fascism and democracy.[522] The fact that a mass-based revolutionary movement exerted considerable influence, particularly in anarchist-dominated areas such as Catalonia, has not figured prominently in the literature on the Spanish conflict until recent times. Conversely, the existence of this revolutionary element, at the time, was actively concealed in the interests of advancing the aims of Soviet foreign policy. For the American councilists, the revolutionary element and the tensions within the Popular Front were central to any understanding of events in Spain.

Between October 1936 and April 1939, International Council Correspondence, and its later incarnations, ran no fewer than eight articles and three book reviews directly related to the conflict in Spain, in addition to a reprinted appeal from the CNT-FAI for international class solidarity.[523] Of the articles, a total of five were written by Paul Mattick, one by Helmut Wagner (a translation from Rätezcorrespondenz), and two by Karl Korsch. The extensive coverage of the Spanish conflict within the pages of International Council Correspondence is all the more notable given the lack of information — from a revolutionary perspective — outside of Spain and in particular, North America. The ‘conciliatory approach towards the CNT’[524] positioned the journal as a mediator between the sometimes uncritical support for the Popular Front by some anarchist groups and the routinely inflexible approach displayed by some Left Communists. Unlike some councilist-oriented organizations, there is no evidence to suggest that the American Group of Council Communists had any physical presence in Spain during the war in the militias or as journalists.[525]

Anti-Fascism, revolution, and the reaction

The first full-length article on Spain appeared in October 1936, less than four months after General Franco launched his military rebellion against the Second Spanish Republic. Written by Paul Mattick, entitled ‘The Civil War in Spain,’ this essay constituted the full issue of International Council Correspondence. It began by outlining the ‘semi-feudal’ social and political conditions in Spain in the years prior to the outbreak of the civil war, with an emphasis on the powerful grip of the church, landowners, and military on the state apparatus and economy, and an assessment of the various forces within the anti-Fascist front.[526] Semi-feudal conditions, argued Mattick, retarded the development of capitalism in Spanish industry and agriculture as well as the emergence of an effective liberal-democratic reform movement which could impose modern capitalist relations on the feudal interests, the working class, and peasantry. Despite the electoral victory of the Popular Front coalition of the liberal and parliamentary labor parties in 1936, the weakness of the Spanish liberal bourgeoisie was further exposed. Moderate government policy in land, labor, and education reforms alienated the traditional Spanish ruling elite and did little to ease tensions or placate the increasingly revolutionary class movement. ‘The reaction,’ wrote Mattick, ‘simply realized that any concession which the bourgeois government made to the workers had to be made at the expense of the reactionary elements.’[527] In rebelling, the Spanish generals, and the class interests they represented, sought to impose its own order by means of a dictatorship which, to the right-wing plotters, was directed ‘against a government which by its previous policy seemed liable to become the prisoner of the labor movement.’[528]

The conflict that ensued, pitting the reaction against anti-Fascist forces, was characterized by political fragmentation, but nonetheless polarized competing elements into two camps. Mattick asserted that:

No doubt the struggle for the power in Spain is between three different tendencies; practically, however, the struggle has as yet been confined to the one between Fascism and Anti-Fascism … The reactionary forces taking up for Fascism are confronted by those of a bourgeois-democratic and social-reformist caste, tho at the same time by a movement aiming at socialism, so that each individual group is fighting against two tendencies: Fascism against Democracy and Revolution, this Democracy against Fascism and Revolution, the Revolution against Fascism and bourgeois democracy.[529]

Mattick noted that while divergent trends coexisted within the anti-Fascist camp, the immediate threat that the reaction posed compelled these forces to unite as a matter of survival, just as the Fascists concerned themselves with the class aspirations of workers rather than on differences in their organizations and policies.

Neither the groups of fascists nor those of the workers are allowed the time or opportunity to go their own special ways, and it is idle to ask whether the Spanish workers under the present conditions should fight against fascism and for bourgeois democracy or not.[530]

Mattick perceptively speculated that ‘[i]n case the reaction should be struck down, then … the struggle of the bourgeois-democratic forces against those which are aiming to set aside the exploitation society must again come into the foreground.’[531] In other words, the frictions within the anti-Fascist front would, due to irreconcilable interests and objectives, come into conflict sooner or later; frictions ‘which must become the greater the longer the civil war is drawn out, since in such conditions the real socialization is bound to spread and the social-reformist forces challenged to greater resistance.’[532]

With these considerations, Mattick turned to an analysis of the different factions within the anti-Fascist front. Spanish social democracy was characterized as the ‘left wing of the bourgeoisie,’ politically concerned with maintaining parliamentary and capitalist institutions. The small but disproportionately influential Spanish Communist Party maintained a similar outlook having ‘given up every policy of its own, other than that of further attenuating the workers’ struggle. Like the Social Democracy it wants nothing more than to defend capitalist democracy against fascism.’[533] If the Spanish Socialist Party represented a center-left position in the Popular Front, the Communist sections were to the right of it on the political spectrum. Only the dissident Marxist POUM (Partido Obrero Unificación Marxista, Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification), of the Popular Front forces, could be considered to be the carriers of a genuine Leninist or Bolshevik position, advancing a program of state ownership of the economy similar to that of the Soviet Union.[534] Of the Spanish anarchists, Mattick wrote:

Over against these ‘marxist’ organizations, which have nothing more in common with Marxism than the name, stands the anarcho-syndicalist movement, which, even though it has not the organizational strength of the popular-front parties, can nevertheless be rated as their worthy adversary, capable of bringing into question the aspirations of the pseudomarxist state capitalists.[535]

The development of anarcho-syndicalist federalism in Spain was considered by Mattick to be a product of the disorganization of the ruling class — divided between liberal-democratic and reactionary elements — and uneven and regional industrial concentrations in Spain, meaning less emphasis on centralized control and direction of the movement:

The localizing of the workers manifestations was … an inevitable product of the circumstance that only industrial oases existed in the feudal desert … In the course of the further industrializing of Spain, this syndicalist movement … will be obliged, regardless of its previous attitude, to take up with more coordinated and centralized forms of organization, if it is not to go under. Or, possibly, the centralistic control and coordination of all political and economic activity will be imposed overnight by a successful revolution; and in these circumstances the federalistic traditions would be of enormous value, since they would form the necessary counter-weight against the dangers of centralism.[536]

Combining centralism and federalism was not understood by Mattick or other councilists as being contradictory. For example, in an earlier article in International Council Correspondence entitled ‘Anarchism and Marxism’ the author ‘WRB’ argued that a communist economy needed co-ordination to satisfy human needs and desires, requiring elements of centralism and federalism. Autarkic, totally self-sufficient units were deemed at best to be unfeasible, and at worst, could develop ‘competitive tendencies’ if autonomous communes engaged in exchanging surplus products with other communes. Decision-making power in a communist society would have to be as decentralized and federative as possible as a corrective to the formation of bureaucracy: thus, a combination of centralized industrial co-ordination and federal decision-making and control.[537] While the CNT syndicatos unicos, or industrial unions, sought to remedy the decentralized craft or trade union structure, Daniel Guérin and others, have also criticized some of the ‘rather naïve and idealistic’[538] conceptions of a localist libertarian communism, expressed by Isaac Puente[539] and dominant in the 1936 Saragossa CNT conference, along the same lines.[540] Guérin, in fact, explicitly rejected Puente’s notion of libertarian communism as an ‘infantile idyll of a jumble of “free communes,” at the heart of the Spanish CNT before 1936 […] This soft dream left Spanish anarcho-syndicalism extremely ill-prepared for the harsh realities of revolution and civil war on the eve of Franco’s putsch.’[541]

Overall, Mattick praised the self-organized nature of the CNT, its rejection of both parliamentarism and soviet-style state capitalism. ‘In the course of the present civil war,’ he wrote, ‘anarcho-syndicalism has been the most forward-driving revolutionary element.’[542]

Mattick maintained that a workers’ revolution in Spain would encounter multiple difficulties. Aside of the immediate threat posed by Fascism stood the likelihood that the Spanish revolutionary movement would be confronted with Popular Front counterrevolution or foreign intervention. To be successful, Mattick held that the revolutionary workers had to encompass an internationalist outlook and extend the revolutionary class struggle beyond its national boundaries, instigating insurgent movements in neighboring France and North Africa in particular.[543] This, he reasoned, would naturally provoke imperialist powers to protect their colonial possessions while controlling domestic dissent, in effect transforming the Spanish conflict into an international class war. Mattick’s view on this was nearly identical to that of Italian anarchist militant Camillo Berneri (1897–1937).[544] Chomsky summarized Berneri’s position:

He argued that Morocco should be granted independence and that an attempt should be made to stir up rebellion throughout North Africa. Thus a revolutionary struggle should be undertaken against Western capitalism in North Africa and, simultaneously, against the bourgeois regime in Spain, which was gradually dismantling the accomplishments of the July revolution.[545]

In proposing such a strategy, Berneri hoped that Franco’s base of military support in North Africa would be severely weakened and that the response by Western capitalist nations would help ignite revolution outside of Spain.

Aside from extending the struggle outside of Spain, according to Mattick, a political anti-Fascist struggle would only bring limited returns, at best ushering in soviet-style state capitalism, so a broader anticapitalist struggle was necessary: ‘The workers’ struggle must be directed not exclusively against Fascism, but against Capital in all its forms and manifestations.’[546]

In the next issue of International Council Correspondence, Mattick wrote a shorter follow-up article entitled ‘What Next in Spain?’ Here Mattick underscored his previous assertion that the revolutionary movement in Spain faced major obstacles and hostilities from the imperialist powers:

The extent of the civil war, the anarchist element in it, allowed for the possibility that in Spain capitalism itself may be wiped out. This would have meant the open intervention of many capitalist powers in Spain and a sudden clash of imperialist interests which probably would have marked the beginning of the world war.[547]

The Russian intervention, claimed Mattick, had put the anarchists at a disadvantage, and severely limited the scope of their activity. ‘Recognizing that Franco would win, in case help from the outside was denied to the loyalists, the anarchists had to accept the Russian bribe and domination of the anti-Fascist front which automatically worked against the anarchists.’[548] In this early stage of the war, Mattick reiterated his position that a joint struggle against Fascism was unavoidable: ‘All political organizations had to fight Franco and postpone the settlement of all other questions […] It would be foolish to blame the revolutionary groups for the one or the other wrong step, as even a correct policy would have meant nothing,’ and continued that ‘The circumstances force the policies of the anarchists, not their own decisions.’[549]

Karl Korsch and anarchist collectivization

Karl Korsch’s major contribution to the councilist perspectives on the war and revolution in Spain was his positive assessment of the anarchist attempts at collectivizing the economy, which he outlined in two articles, ‘Economics and Politics in Revolutionary Spain’ and ‘Collectivization in Spain,’ both published in 1938 as the prospects of an anti-Fascist victory appeared slim. Both of these articles were originally intended for publication in the Frankfurt School’s Institute for Social Research journal in New York but disagreements between Korsch and the Institute, arising from editorial revisions, compelled him to publish them in Living Marxism.[550]

In ‘Economics and Politics in Revolutionary Spain’ Korsch argued that the Spanish revolution and its achievements in collectivization represented a new period of class struggle worthy of serious attention and could not be mechanically evaluated ‘with some abstract ideal or with results attained under entirely different historical conditions.’[551] Korsch maintained that the Spanish revolution ‘should not be compared with anything which happened in Russia after October, 1917.’[552] In this assertion, Korsch sought to defend the revolutionary movement in Spain against unnamed Leninist critics who ‘extoll the revolutionary consistency of the Bolshevik leadership of 1917, to the detriment of the “chaotic irresolution” displayed by the dissentions and waverings of the Spanish Syndicalists and Anarchists of 1936–1938.’[553] Against these critics, Korsch argued that the ‘Bolshevik leadership of 1917 was in no way exempt from those human wavering and want of foresight which are inherent in any revolutionary action.’[554] Specifically, Korsch cited Lenin’s support of the Kerensky government in Russia against General Kornilov’s counter-revolutionary rebellion showing ‘how little the minor followers of Lenin are entitled to criticize the deficiencies of the syndicalist achievements in revolutionary Catalonia.’[555] Politically, Korsch’s defense of the Spanish anarchists and syndicalists was aimed at removing the ‘deep shadow thrown on the constructive work’ of Catalonia’s revolutionary workers by Stalinists, and exposing the socialist content of collectivization as opposed to state capitalist nationalization.[556]

Korsch’s follow-up article, ‘Collectivization in Spain,’ maintained that the Spanish workers had achieved a greater degree of success in constructing a self-managed economy than their early twentieth-century predecessors. Basing his account on a CNT-FAI pamphlet — Collectivization: The constructive work of the Spanish Revolution – Korsch asserted that ‘[t]he syndicalist and anarchist labor movement of Spain’ were ‘better informed and possessed a much more realistic conception of the necessary steps to achieve their economic aims than had been shown, in similar situations, by the so-called “Marxist” labor movements in other parts of Europe.’[557] While anarchist and syndicalist attempts at realizing workers’ self-management were restricted by reactionary forces as well as the moderate, Soviet-backed Popular Front government, for Korsch, despite these limitations, the historical importance and lessons of the Spanish revolution were to be placed alongside the 1871 Paris Commune, the 1918 Hungarian and Bavarian revolutions, and the early revolutionary achievements of the Russian Revolution in 1917.[558]

Korsch emphasized that the Catalan workers were able to expropriate vast sections of industry, transportation, and other sectors of the economy after their owners and managers, many of whom had supported the military rebellion, fled after its defeat in Barcelona and other areas. This revolt which ‘resembled a war against an invisible enemy,’ showed the ‘relative ease with which under equally fortunate circumstances … deep and far reaching changes in production management and wage payment can be accomplished without great formal and organizational transformations.’[559]

Korsch concluded with an analysis of his main interest, namely, the Spanish syndicalist form of organization. ‘These syndicalist formations,’ he stated, ‘anti-party and anti-centralistic, were entirely based on the free action of the working masses.’ This feature of Spanish syndicalism was considered by Korsch to be an asset, as its activity was based on non-bureaucratic methods, ‘managed from the outset not by professional officialdom, but by the elite of the workers in the respective industries.’ Further, ‘[t]he energy of the anti-state attitude of the revolutionary Spanish proletariat, unhampered by self-created organizational or ideological obstacles explains all their surprising successes in the face of overwhelming difficulties.’[560]

Problems of political organization: syndicates or soviets?

While acknowledging the difficult circumstances in Spain during the years of the civil war — and importantly, circumstances which compelled the CNT-FAI to participate in the Popular Front government — both Mattick and Korsch also criticized anarchist attitudes towards political organization, or perhaps more accurately, the separation of the political from the economic in the revolutionary period. For Korsch, this was the single most important lesson, not only of the Spanish revolution, but of the entire post-First World War revolutionary period:

The very fact that the CNT and FAI themselves were finally compelled to reverse their traditional policy of noninterference in politics under the pressure of increasingly bitter experiences, demonstrated […] the vital connection between the economic and political action in every phase and, most of all, in the immediately revolutionary phase of the proletarian class struggle. This, then is the first and foremost lesson of that concluding phase of the whole revolutionary history of post war Europe which is the Spanish revolution.[561]

In keeping with councilist perspectives on emergent social forms that develop through the revolutionary process, Korsch’s critique underscored the position that revolutionary organizations cannot be formed prior to a revolutionary period and must develop in accordance with the tasks at hand by placing all power in the workers’ councils, rather than maintaining traditional leadership roles and sectional interests. In a review of anarchist Diego Santillan’s After the Revolution, Mattick also gave a clear picture of the function of syndicates, formed in a pre-revolutionary period, and the problems associated with maintaining this organizational form in a revolutionary period:

It must be borne in mind that syndicates, including the anarchist CNT, are pre-revolutionary organizations which were organized principally to wrest concessions from the capitalist class. In order to do this most efficiently, a staff of organizers, an apparatus, was necessary. This staff became the new bureaucracy, its members the leaders and guides.[562]

The failure of the anarchists to assert a new form of working-class political power meant that state and capitalist power, which had largely, but not entirely, dissolved in vast areas of Spain (particularly Catalonia) in the aftermath of Franco’s coup d’etat, was able to reassert itself and regain its former position of dominance. This also meant that, in the absence of an alternative political-economic framework, the CNT-FAI were ultimately forced to compromise their anti-statist principles by entering the government.

The Barcelona May Days, 1937

Ultimately, in May 1937 in Barcelona, the logical end of this compromise between the CNT-FAI and the Popular Front government culminated in the defeat of the workers’ movement.[563] This historical moment revealed the tensions within the broad ‘Republican’ camp in the struggle against Fascism, and the divergent strategies in conducting the war and the economy. ‘No historical episode,’ claimed historian Burnett Bolloten, ‘has been so diversely reported or defined.’[564] For the anarchists and POUM, the May Days were simply a response from the working class to communist provocations. Bolloten observed that few accounts of May 1937 ‘were reconcilable, which partially explains why the May events, despite numerous attempts to clarify them, are still … shrouded in obscurity.’[565]

Tensions began in early April when the PSUC (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya, Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia, the only Comintern-affiliated organization in Catalonia) and UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores, General Union of Workers, a union aligned politically with the PSUC) announced a ‘Victory Plan’ for Catalonia, seeking to create a regular army in the region, nationalize war industries and transport, create an internal government security force, and concentrate all arms and munitions into the hands of the government: in effect, reassert state power and authority in Catalonia.[566] The political assassinations of Communist officials Rodriquez Salas and Roldan Cortada and AntonioMartin, the anarchist president of a revolutionary committee in Puigcerda, were quickly followed by the seizure of ‘frontier posts along the Franco-Spanish border hitherto controlled by revolutionary committees,’ dispatched by finance minister Juan Negrin from Valencia, the seat of the Popular Front government.[567] In this politically sensitive atmosphere, May Day celebrations in Barcelona were canceled for fear that openly displaying political allegiances in the city could trigger violence. Finally, on May 3, government forces seized the telefónica, or central telephone exchange. The telephone exchange had been operated by a joint UGT-CNT committee where ‘the Anarcho-syndicalists were the dominant force, and their red and black flag, which had flown from the tower of the building ever since July, attested to their supremacy.’[568] The people of the working-class districts of Barcelona, where anarcho-syndicalists were firmly entrenched, were enraged by the seizure of the telephone exchange. Strategically located buildings were quickly occupied and barricades erected. Intense street-fighting between armed workers and government forces continued for four days. Only after the CNT-FAI leadership appealed for a cease-fire were the barricades dismantled and the workers disarmed. Graham concluded that:

The meaning of the May Days was not, in the end, about ‘breaking the CNT’ per se – its leadership was already a willing part of the liberal Republican alliance. Rather it was about breaking the CNT’s organizational solidarities in Barcelona to deprive its constituencies … of the mechanisms and political means of resisting the state. ‘May’ was about a process of forcible ‘nationalization’: in the immediate term about war production, but ultimately about state building through social disciplining and capitalist control of national economic production.[569]

Mattick commented on these developments in two articles. In ‘Civil War in Catalonia’ he stated that ‘The clash between the Generalidad and the Anarchists is a natural outgrowth of the politics of the “Peoples Front” … The logic of the Peoples Front politics dominated by Russian diplomacy makes the shooting and suppression of revolutionary workers inevitable.’[570] Mattick’s second article on the Barcelona May Days, ‘Moscow-Fascism: The Barricades Must be Torn Down!,’ forcefully condemned the Popular Front policy:

The workers’ revolution must be radical from the very outset, or it will be lost. There was required the complete expropriation of the possessing classes, the elimination of all power other than that of the armed workers, and the struggle against all elements opposing such a course. Not doing this, the May Days of Barcelona, and the elimination of the revolutionary elements in Spain were inevitable. The CNT never approached the question of revolution from the viewpoint of the working class, but has always been concerned first of all with the organization. It was acting for the workers and with the aid of the workers, but was not interested in the self-initiative and action of the workers independent of organizational interests.[571]

Mattick noted in passing that ‘The “Friends of Durruti” split away from the corrupted leaders of the CNT and FAI in order to restore original anarchism, to safeguard the ideal, to maintain the revolutionary tradition,’ but did so too late.[572] He concluded that the revolutionary movement would have to reassert itself, declaring that ‘The barricades, if again erected, should not be torn down.’[573]

Conclusions

The American councilists, while sympathetic to the cause of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists, directed two major criticisms at their performance in a revolutionary situation. First, the anarchist workers failed to create unified economic-political organs of workers’ power in areas in which they clearly held a dominant position and suppress counter-revolutionary elements. In neglecting to do so, they allowed a weakened state power to reemerge, culminating in the Barcelona May Days. Second, and related to the first, was a theoretical weakness, which recognized the dangers of statist bureaucracy but did not extend this understanding to the syndicates, where the CNT-FAI leadership became gradually separated from the self-organized activity of the working class. These attitudes were tempered by an intimate understanding of the very difficult circumstances, and isolation, in which the Spanish anarchist movement found itself.

Within this historical juncture, these critiques rather than creating a further gulf between Marxist-councilist and anarchist revolutionary theory, indicate a more considerable sphere of theoretical convergence. This is particularly evident when considering the positions adopted by the Friends of Durruti (FoD), one of the few organized elements in Barcelona in 1937 which actively discouraged the armed workers from abandoning the barricades.

The FoD was formed primarily to combat what they regarded as the reformist positions of the leadership of the CNT-FAI and the gradual surrender of the revolutionary gains of July 1936. The two of the most important political decisions which they were opposed were the CNT-FAI entry into the Republican central and regional Catalan governments and the acceptance of the militarization of the workers’ militias under the political direction of the government. On the first point, the rejection of CNT-FAI ‘ministerialism,’ the FoD criticized the ‘treason’ of the CNT leadership in collaborating with elements in the state apparatus who were hostile to the main social revolutionary achievements of the working-class movement: particularly the collectivization of large segments of industry and agriculture and the workers’ patrols in place of government security or police agencies. That this collaboration was conducted as the only viable option, for anti-Fascist unity in the war effort, was totally rejected by the FoD. The war and the revolution were inseparable, and to postpone the revolution was to destroy the morale of the working-class base of support which sustained the war effort. On the second point, the reorganization of the workers’ militias into a regular army, the FoD were not opposed to a co-ordinated, well-organized military. In fact, the group outlined the basis for such a formation, which they referred to as a ‘confederal army’ which they envisaged as being co-ordinated by a ‘single collective command,’ under the guidance of working-class organizations.[574] What they objected to was the hierarchy, military formalism, and above all, the state direction of the military under the guise of being a nonpolitical formation.

The FoD, while a small grouping inside the CNT-FAI, might be said to have some influence beyond their small numbers,[575] and certainly, reflected the opinions of the rank and file of those organizations, at least if the spontaneous fighting of the May Days is taken as a barometer. These events were understood as a turning point, signaling the defeat of the revolutionary movement. During the street fighting in Barcelona between government forces and the armed working-class, the FoD openly defied the appeals of the CNT-FAI leadership for a cease fire, and went one step further, agitating for the creation of a ‘revolutionary junta.’ This ‘junta’ or council was envisaged as an organ of working-class political power, suppressing the forces that were in open conflict with the revolutionary movement. In the aftermath of the May Days Jaime Balius, the most prominent intellectual voice of the group, presented a critique of the CNT-FAI and outlined a proposed alternative political-economic structure in the pamphlet Towards a Fresh Revolution. In this pamphlet, Balius sought to resolve the contradictions of official CNT-FAI policy while advancing a more consistent interpretation of ‘libertarian communism.’ Balius argued that the CNT lacked a coherent vision and was not prepared to face the tasks of building and defending the revolution.

What happened was what had to happen. The CNT was utterly devoid of revolutionary theory. We did not have a concrete program. We had no idea where we were going … By not knowing what to do, we handed the revolution on a platter to the bourgeoisie and the marxists who support the farce of yesteryear. What is worse, we allowed the bourgeoisie a breathing space; to return, to re-form and to behave as would a conqueror.[576]

The CNT-FAI, argued Balius, ‘collaborated with the bourgeoisie in the affairs of state, precisely when the State was crumbling away on all sides […] It breathed a lungful of oxygen into an anemic, terror-stricken bourgeoisie.’ CNT-FAI collaboration with the state, then, not only violated anti-statist principles but allowed the Popular Front forces time to revive state power and limit collectivization in Barcelona and other areas. Balius argued that ‘One of the most direct reasons why the revolution has been asphyxiated and the CNT displaced, is that it behaved like a minority group, even though it had a majority in the streets.’[577] The proposed ‘revolutionary junta’ of the FoD was not envisaged as a ‘substitutionist body,’ separate from the working-class, but rather an elected body drawn exclusively from working-class organizations with the tasks of managing the war effort, maintaining public order, international affairs, and conducting revolutionary propaganda. The council would include a recall process and a regular rotation of members to prevent a bureaucratic class from developing, and would be subordinate to the unions in economic affairs. Syndicates would thus be the main organ from which the council would draw its political power and legitimacy, and would have the responsibility of directing the economy on the principles of workers’ self-management. As Balius noted at a later stage, the FoD advocated ‘all power to the syndicates,’ or unions, rather than soviets, as the revolutionary committees of the CNT were regarded as possessing the organizational attributes necessary for carrying out libertarian communist reconstruction.

We did not support the formation of Soviets; there were no grounds in Spain for calling for such. We stood for ‘all power to the trade unions.’ In no way were we politically oriented. The junta was simply a way out, a revolutionary formula to save the revolutionary conquests of July 1936. We were unable to exercise great influence because the Stalinists, helped by the CNT and FAI reformists, undertook their counter-revolutionary aggression so rapidly.[578]

The FoD differed slightly with the councilists on this point, however, in other ways their self-criticism were nearly indistinguishable from the views of Mattick and Korsch. ‘Taking power’ would mean nothing less than the direction of the economy, war effort, and all other areas by workers’ organizations and the suppression of counter-revolutionary groups by workers’ militias directly tied and accountable to these organizations. Halfway measures and compromises with social forces hostile to social revolution would only result in defeat.

In terms of the significance of these historical revolutionary movements towards anarchist-Marxist convergences, these may be considered to have underscored a common emphasis on working-class self-organization as both method and non-dogmatic source of inspiration. Mattick, in reflecting on Korsch’s contributions to revolutionary Marxism, perhaps best sums up this attitude:

Korsch turned to the anarchists without giving up his Marxist conceptions; not to the petty-bourgeois anarchists of laissez faire ideology, but to the anarchist workers and poor peasants of Spain who had not yet succumbed to the international counter-revolution which now counted among its symbols the name of Marx as well … The anarchist emphasis on freedom and spontaneity, on self-determination, and, therefore, decentralization, on action rather than ideology, on solidarity more than on economic interest were precisely the qualities that had been lost to the socialist movement in its rise to political influence and power in the expanding capitalist nations. It did not matter to Korsch whether his anarchistically-biased interpretation of revolutionary Marxism was true to Marx or not. What mattered, under the conditions of twentieth-century capitalism, was to recapture these anarchist attitudes in order to have a labor movement at all.[579]

It is on this level that we begin to see some of the broad outlines of a libertarian communist politics in the interwar period, expressed less as a doctrinal system or tradition, but rather as a series of common considerations and political commitments forged during heightened revolutionary periods, and further developed upon reflection in defeat. The workers’ councils of the Dutch-German councilists, the ‘revolutionary junta’ of the Friends of Durruti, as well as the ‘free soviets’ and calls for more coherent forms of political organization by the Makhnovschina in an earlier period, among others, reflect a common organizational focus on forms of workers’ autonomy and a view to generalizing these emergent social forms as the basis for a free society.