Chapter 12 : The ‘Storm Petrels’ Return

12: The ‘Storm Petrels’ Return

The declaration of the Republic permitted the return from exile and the regrouping of the dispersed younger anarchist activists who were to challenge the campaign engineered by Pestaña’s Solidaridad group aimed at weaning the CNT away from its anti-statist and anti-political statutes. As well as confronting what they saw as the institutionalized leadership of the older generation, these young men were to infuse the Spanish anarchist movement with a fresh revolutionary ardor that was to enable it to resist, successfully, a military uprising and lay the foundations of one of the most profound social revolutions in history. Prominent among these were the members of the old Los Solidarios and Los Treinta group. [91]

A few days after his return from exile, textile worker Buenaventura Durruti, one of the better-known members of the old Los Solidarios, clarified the anarchist position toward the new bourgeois Republic in a speech in Barcelona on 18 April. They understood only too well the Republic could not provide a satisfactory solution to the workers’ problems; but it had to discredit itself in the eyes of those who hoped for so much from it. The revolutionary anarchists, like every other section of the anarchist movement, including the Urales family, were at least prepared to give the Republic the benefit of the doubt, believing they could steer the institutions of the bourgeois democratic regime into ‘constructive’ work.

Durruti gently reminded those comrades who held out great hopes for the Republic that the traditional role of anarchists in relation to governments, revolutionary or otherwise, was in opposition. He emphasized that the degree of anarchist opposition would be geared to the willingness of the Republic to confront the major problems facing the Spanish workers. In everything constructive it did, the Republic could rely on the enthusiastic support of all honest revolutionaries. But he also warned the bourgeoisie and the reformist unionists that they would not default on their revolutionary commitments as anarchists or act contrary to their anti-statist and anti-capitalist principles:

‘If we were Republicans, we would maintain that the provisional government is capable of making a success of the victory given to it by the people. But we are authentic workers and in their name we say that, following this path, we will not be surprised if the country finds itself on the edge of a civil war tomorrow. The Republic does not interest us, but we accept it as the springboard of a process of social democratization. But only provided, of course, that this Republic goes guarantor for the principles according to which freedom and social justice are not merely empty words. Should the Republic scorn to take into consideration the aspirations of the working class then the slight interest it has aroused in the workers will be whittled away to nothing because that institution will cease to correspond to the hopes which our class placed in it on 14 April.’[92]

Despite its optimistic commitment to social reform the Republic was incapable of acting as guarantor of either freedom or social justice. Neither was it possible for the CNT to expect anything from a government which contained Largo Caballero, Indalecio Prieto and Fernando de los Rios — the three socialist leaders whose careers had been predicated on establishing and consolidating the bourgeois Republic and strengthening the socialist UGT at the expense of its only rival for the hearts and minds of the Spanish working class, the CNT. Bookchin quotes an un-named socialist leader in 1932 that shows clearly the distance and antipathy between the two contending ideologies:

Later, Durruti added: ‘As anarchists we declare that our activities never have been and never will be at the service of any political party or any state. The anarchists and the union members of the CNT, united with all the revolutionaries and backed by pressure from the street, have as their goal to compel the people in government to carry out their mandate.’[93]

‘There is a good deal of confusion in the minds of many comrades. They consider Anarchist Syndicalism as an ideal which runs parallel with our own, when it is its absolute antithesis, and that the Anarchists and Syndicalists are comrades when they are our greatest enemies.’[94]

The bourgeois republican and socialist politicians, anxious to appease the powerful landed interests, and their rightist supporters in the army and church, sought to reassure these reactionary forces that the new regime did not intend to upset the delicate balance of social forces in the nation. As if to underline this, a series of labor and public order laws were introduced which clearly targeted the revolutionary threat — the CNT. The compulsory arbitration of Caballero’s agrarian ‘mixed juries’ (jurados mixtos), although intended to relieve the misery of the Andalucian peasants, effectively banned the right to strike and undermined the CNT’s principles of direct action and opposition to political collaboration.

Laws that assert the rights of labor can also affirm the rights of capital and the legitimacy of state power. ‘Apart from the fact that these laws ran contrary to the Anarcho-syndicalist principles of negotiating directly with employers and interfered with the practice of lightning strikes’, observed Gerald Brenan:

‘… it was clear that they represented an immense increase in the power of the State in industrial matters. A whole army of Government officials, mostly socialists, made their appearance to enforce new laws and saw to it that, whenever possible, they should be used to extend the influence of the UGT at the expense of the CNT. This had of course been the intention of those who drew them up. In fact the UGT was rapidly becoming an organ of the State itself and was using its new powers to reduce its rival. The Anarcho-Syndicalists could have no illusions as to what would happen to them if a purely socialist Government should come to power. To that they almost preferred a military dictatorship, which would force their organization to disband, but could not destroy them.’[95]

To remind the new Provisional Government, with its hotchpotch of disparate groups, parties and interests all contending for power, what the working class expected of it, the CNT and FAI organized a joint meeting on 1 May in Barcelona’s Palace of Fine Arts. The anarchists’ demands were a direct challenge to the bourgeois Liberal and socialist politicians and the old semi-feudal order alike: the dissolution of the hated Civil Guard, the expropriation of the investments of the religious orders to fund public works, land to the peasants and the factories to the workers.

The meeting ended with a peaceful march through Barcelona to the Generalitat Palace. Francisco Ascaso disarmed a Civil Guard officer who had refused to let the marchers through to deliver a petition and ordered them to disperse at pistol point. At this crucial moment Durruti emerged from the crowd brandishing the black-and-red anarcho-syndicalist flag shouting ‘Make way for the FAI!’ The marchers followed. Within moments they had filled the Plaza de la Constitucion. When the workers’ commission leading the demonstration attempted to hand in their resolutions, Civil Guard and Carabineros opened fire on the crowd. Armed workers, supported by a company of infantry troops stationed nearby, returned fire, forcing the Civil Guard and Carabineers to retreat. The tally was one demonstrator dead and 15 wounded. Two Civil Guards were killed and an unknown number wounded. [96]

The confrontation between the workers and the forces of order of the new Republic on 1 May 1931 marked the beginning of the end of the period of grace which the working-class anarchist revolutionaries had been prepared to grant the bourgeois–socialist coalition government. The blood spilled in Barcelona’s Plaza de la Constitucion gave substance to the anarchists’ denunciation of the reactionary nature of the Republic and its incompatibility with revolutionary working-class objectives. Tension between the collaborationist leadership and revolutionary base of the CNT had reached breaking point. The FAI, still numerically and organizationally weak, now began to emerge as the instrument through which the anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists and working-class militants, the vast majority of whom were not affiliated to a FAI group, could focus their opposition to the class-collaborationist stance adopted by the leadership and reaffirm the anarchist content of the CNT.

The reformist challenge from such an influential sector of the CNT leadership, goaded by the cajolery of Republican politicians seeking a neutered and malleable union movement, left the revolutionary anarchists with no alternative but to respond to the sustained attacks on the anarchist spirit of the union. From a fairly low-key and not particularly efficient propagandist and educational body under the dictatorship, the FAI became the voice of the revolutionary cutting edge of the CNT.

The unionists upheld the virtues of moderation and compromise. They believed that the liberties and reforms that the Republic could offer, albeit gradual and piecemeal, would constitute a beneficial opportunity for the unions to fulfill their economic and welfare functions. Mass consciousness would be raised, values would change, human freedom would advance and the foundations for long-term revolutionary objectives would be laid.

For the anarchists this argument served only to legitimize the interminable exploitation and injustice of existing society. As long as revolutionaries were prepared to make accommodations with capitalism and accept the sovereignty of the State, both these institutions would thrive at the expense of the oppressed. Comfortable in their relationships with the bourgeois politicians, and lacking confidence in the workers’ ability to overcome capitalism and build a free society, the union leaders had, by opposing the revolutionary violence of the oppressed, opted for what they presumed to be the ‘lesser’ evil. In so doing they helped perpetuate the already drawn-out misery, oppression and violence which the workers faced in their everyday lives and dashed all prospects for qualitative change. As long as capitalism and the state remained there would continue to exist powerful vested interests that would oppose and resist the working-class drive to a less repressive, more just and freer society.

The break with repressive capitalism and the state had to be complete and, if necessary, violent, if only, as Barrington Moore points out, to ensure subsequent peaceful change and avoid the even more horrendous costs of going without a revolution:

‘These are the tragedies of the victims of fascism and its wars of aggression, the consequences of modernization without a real revolution. In the backward countries today, there continues the suffering of those who have not revolted.’[97]

The ‘mass consciousness’ and ‘change in human values’ talked about by social democrats and Marxists as a prerequisite for revolutionary change were abstract and theoretical ploys in the arsenal of liberal democracy and authoritarian socialism. The anarchists argued that the ‘level of mass consciousness’ required to change human values and the fundamental nature of capitalist and statist society was an illusory ideal that could never be achieved within a class-divided society. Changes in attitude may well be gradual and ongoing, but if there were ever to be a qualitative shift in human values it would only come as a consequence of the revolutionary process.

Around this time the revolutionary anarchists developed the concept of the ‘revolutionary gymnasium’. The idea came from the activists of the CNT Defense Committee, not the FAI (although it came to be associated with that organization simply because in matters of ideas the CNT militants, many of whom did not belong to FAI-affiliated groups, spoke in its name). It postulated that the only viable revolutionary option open to them under the prevailing conditions in Spain was to embark on a succession of direct insurrectionary attacks against the State whenever the time and the opportunity presented itself.

The two irreconcilable tendencies within the CNT prepared for a major confrontation at the forthcoming Extraordinary National Congress of the CNT set for 11 June at the Conservatorio Theater in Madrid. Companys and Macià’s Esquerra party, a petty-bourgeois Catalan party that tried to pass itself off as socialist, also supported the pestañista faction that they knew would adapt itself to Republican and Catalan legality. The Pestañistas also received the support of the national bourgeois press. On the eve of the National Congress, El Sol, the Madrid daily, published a major feature article promoting Ángel Pestaña as a responsible, strong and masterful leader of a labor union that was attracting Republicans and socialist alike. In the interview, Pestaña outlined the state of the CNT and described what he saw as its immediate objectives. Asked if he believed in revolution, the syndicalist leader replied: ‘I believe firmly that a revolution is inevitable, but not as soon as some people believe.’[98]

By the time the Third (Conservatorio) Congress of the CNT began in Madrid on 11 June 1931 the battle lines were drawn. Although numerically weak, the position argued by those CNT militants who belonged to the FAI reflected the mood of the 400 or so delegates who represented over half a million workers. The rise to prominence of these militants was not the result of infiltrating committees, a tactic which they left to reformists, or from any numerical predominance or gerrymandering by anarchists, but because the FAI was the only organ which voiced the collective dissatisfaction of the rank and file with the policies of the leadership. In the atmosphere of social conflict which hung over Spain in the summer of 1931 — strikes in Andalucia, Asturias, Catalonia and Aragón — the anarchist position expressed by the FAI reflected the hostility of the base of the CNT to the now embarrassingly conciliatory, deferential and compromising attitudes of the union leadership to the reactionary and anti-anarchist policies of the new government.