Chapter 23 : The FAI Turned Upside Down

23: The FAI Turned Upside Down

From 21 July onward the FAI, led by Diego Abad de Santillán, ceased to operate as an independent entity. The trabazón and the Civil War had fuzed both organizations into an entity known as the CNT–FAI. However, the sharing of power with the other political parties, first through the Militias Committee, then, later, through the Generalitat and central governments, also meant the sharing of values. It was not long before the bourgeois utilitarian strategy of expediency displaced traditional anarchist concern for the values of social justice.

From 21 July onwards, as we have seen, social revolution was removed from the agenda of the joint CNT–FAI committees. The revolutionary events that were, by that time, moving into top gear in industry and in the countryside, particularly in Aragón, were ignored. Other than calling off the general strike declared on 19 July the higher committees provided no guidelines for the militants apart from urging a military victory against fascism ‘at any price’. The ‘price’ was the formal renunciation of anarchist principles. On 27 July faista and Catalan regional secretary Mariano Vázquez met the British consul in Barcelona to promise them that the CNT would provide guards to ensure the workers would not socialize eighty-seven companies in which Britain expressed an interest. The CNT–FAI leadership gave similar assurances to the representatives of other nations that their industrial and commercial interests would also be protected.

Having taken the unilateral decision to abandon Libertarian Communism as the immediate objective of the CNT–FAI, the leadership had to convince the broad base of the membership — and the ‘conscious minority’ — that the ideals nourished by three generations of activists (ideals for which countless militants had died, been tortured and/or spent long years in prison), could not be applied in practice against a backdrop of civil war and the hostility of international capitalism. The dilemma, as they presented it, was war or revolution.

The first Regional Plenum of the Catalan CNT took place on 9 August. There was no agenda to be discussed and either accepted or rejected by the general assembly; it was, rather, an outlining of the reasons for the decisions taken to date and the blunt statement that the policy of the CNT–FAI was now ‘antifascist unity’ not Libertarian Communism.

The revolution, however, was developing along very different lines in the rural areas of neighboring Aragón. While the CNT–FAI leaders in Catalonia were urging their members to give precedence to the war against fascism over class war, as though they were in some way different, the rural workers of Aragón were pressing ahead with the revolution and expressing their anger and discontent openly, subjecting the Barcelona-based leaders to embarrassing public criticism.

The revolutionary mood of the workers was expressed during a local general assembly of unions at Valderrobres in Teruel province:

‘We have said it everywhere, including in the regional assembly in Caspe — we must not forget what happened to our anarchist comrades in Russia… I do not know whether or not Aragón is in a position to implement Libertarian Communism [said one delegate]. Nor do I know if the time has arrived to do away forever with the previous outmoded system. What I do know is that throughout Upper and Lower Aragón, by unanimous desire and free will, communitarian life is being organized within the greatest possible liberty. And all this without any talk of Libertarian Communism.’

‘We would never have believed that it would be the very anarchist daily Tierra y Libertad, which would attempt to douse Aragón in cold water, as occurred during the general assembly in Caspe with comrade Marianet. It is easy [to say] that the confederal members of Aragón, Rioja and Navarre should not forget confederal tactics; what we have not forgotten, nor can we forget, is that we are living a reality which no one can deny… In Spain it is possible to establish liberty and justice, and we firmly believe it is time to demonstrate this. This is what we are doing, neither more nor less.’[223]

The arguments of the war and the threat of international intervention carried the day for the prominent Catalan-centric CNT–FAI leadership in the argument over revolution. There were three distinct points of view within the movement on the question of war and revolution. Out of the two million or so members of the CNT perhaps only 300,000 or so might have described themselves as conscious anarchists or anarcho-syndicalists. Most of these believed the war would be over in a matter of weeks. After all, a few days had been sufficient to rout the army in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and other industrial centers. They were enemies of collaboration and continued to believe in Libertarian Communism as a matter of principle but, either out of deference to the CNT–FAI leadership or simply resigning themselves to the ‘force of circumstances’ and requirements of the war argument, with the notable exception of the Defense council of Aragon they decided to forego it as a short-term objective.

The CNT–FAI leaders, on the other hand, anticipated a lengthy war and opposed implementing Libertarian Communism until it had been won. To this end they committed themselves to maintaining public order, restoring production and reassuring their bourgeois allies and international capitalism alike that they had nothing to fear from the anarchists. In the name of ‘antifascist unity’ they opted for compromise and accommodation with the bourgeois and Marxist parties but their strategic reasons were to prevent a victorious but exhausted CNT being overwhelmed by another political force which had been more sparing with its resources. It was an ultimately corrupting strategy which soon absorbed all their energies, separated principles from practice, distanced the movement from its anarcho-syndicalist constitution, removed the decision-making process from the rank and file, and transformed what had been a great working-class instrument into just another oligarchic reformist socialist institution.

‘National unity’, the rallying cry of statists through the ages, was the balm that soothed the painful memories and experiences of class collaboration over the previous 50 years. Political inexperience and naivety as to the nature and mechanics of power politics, with its distinction between private and public morality, led the CNT–FAI leaders, in a spirit of forgiveness and in the name of anti-fascist solidarity, to overlook the systematically repressive role played by the socialists and nationalists under the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and in the early years of the Second Republic, its anti-libertarian legislation and the more recent bloody and unnecessary suppression of the peasants of Casas Viejas. The world of politics demanded the nature of Machiavelli’s The Prince. It was a world for which the CNT–FAI leaders were unsuited and unprepared. Although they were ‘lions’ who could ‘frighten the wolves’, they had none of the fox’s knowledge of the ‘traps and snares’ of political life. As Machiavelli observed ‘Those who simply hold to the nature of the lion do not understand their business.’[224] It did not take them too long to ‘understand’ the business, but by that time their business was sustaining the state, not overthrowing it.

The third body of opinion was that defended by the ‘conscious minority’ of articulate so-called ‘uncontrollable’ anarchists who anticipated a lengthy war, but held that war and revolution were inseparable. Only a libertarian revolution could finally destroy fascism because to do so meant destroying the State, since fascism was only the State in a particular mode of operation: all States turn to fascism when the threat to power and privilege that the State protects and embodies becomes sufficiently menacing. Fascism occurs when privilege can no longer be secured by voluntary means; it is, in other words, enforced class rule as opposed to the voluntary class collaboration of liberal democracy. The militants who held this view, however, were the most active and committed ones who had gone off to fight with the militia columns of Aragón and Levante in the early days of July and August. Isolated at the front with the taking of Zaragoza stalled (as things turned out, it was never, in fact, to be taken) they had little chance of their views being published in the leadership-controlled confederal media or in the general assemblies. It was, therefore, very much a vanguard–versus-rearguard debate; the activists at the front urging revolution in the rear, while those in the rear (the administrators and ‘leaders’, supported by a fatalistically resigned majority) urged war.

The final collapse into oligarchy was rapid. By late September 1936 the Peninsular Committee of the FAI began to assert its organizational authority over some of the affiliated groups. In a numbered but undated first circular to the regional federations and groups, the Peninsular Committee informed its affiliates of the need to restructure the organization and the need to recruit new members. The underlying assumption was that all that was required for final victory was the creation of a sufficiently large, solid and cohesive organization:

‘…We, on this Committee, have seen to it that in all its activities the specific movement [the FAI] has been linked with the Confederal Organization, establishing a single front which has kept the ideal which we champion enjoying immensely high prestige. The feverish activity of the early moments of the struggle, and the no less intense activity which followed it, in terms both of the war and of the reconstruction of the economy, was wholly shared with the Confederal Organization, the letters which stand for the Confederal and Specific movements binding into one single acronym…

‘The battle joined against fascism remains a furious one and our primary concern has been, and remains, to mobilize the wherewithal for its prosecution. Now then, we must bear it in mind that the greater the organized and cohesive force we may have, the better our chances of this will be. Likewise, the reorganization of our cadres and the expansion of our numbers are matters of urgency. The ethos, which the heroism of our militants has aroused to favorable effect among the people, has to be capitalized upon so as to broaden the scope of our action. The FAI’s influence must reach into every nook and cranny and to this end it requires numerous and well-prepared groups. The example of the Regionals, which are engaged in overhauling their organization, must be taken on board as the model to be imitated, and in this way we will ensure that the tremendous aura that surrounds our movement may faithfully reflect our membership. The gaps torn in our ranks by the shrapnel of murderous fascism have to be speedily filled by means of honorable replacements for our fallen comrades…’[225]

A short while later the Catalan press informed the world that the CNT had officially renounced its apolitical stance and was as from 27 September 1936 now a full member of the Generalitat government of Catalonia which had replaced the Militias Committee. The CNT–FAI leaders were now totally caught up in the narrow technical aspects of the war against fascism and had lost all sight of the broader consequences of their actions. Santillán later reflected on the decision to join the government:

‘The Militias Committee guaranteed the supremacy of the [Catalan] people in arms, guaranteed Catalonia’s autonomy, guaranteed the purity and legitimacy of war, guaranteed the resurrection of the Spanish pulse and of the Spanish soul: but we were told and it was repeated to us endlessly that as long as we persisted in retaining it, that is, as long as we persisted in propping up the power of the people, weapons would not come to Catalonia, nor would we be granted the foreign currency to obtain them from abroad, nor would we be supplied with the raw materials for our industry. And since losing the war meant losing everything and returning to a state like the one that prevailed in the Spain of Ferdinand VII, and in the conviction that the drive given by us and our people could not vanish completely from the new economic life, we quit the Militias Committee to join the Generalitat government in its Defense Councilorship and the other vital departments of the autonomous government.’[226]

On 23 October the CNT–FAI leaders signed a ‘Pact of Unity’ with the socialist UGT and the Stalinist newly formed Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia, PSUC), bringing the spontaneous collectivization process begun by the workers under the control of the State. It was Article 15 of this agreement, however, which showed that the CNT–FAI leadership were prepared to act ruthlessly against the ‘conscious minority’ of anarchists who insisted on pushing revolutionary class-war policies against their own recommendations. ‘We are agreed upon common action to stamp out the harmful activities of uncontrollable groups which, out of lack of understanding or malice, pose a threat to the implementation of this program.’[227]

Two days later, on 25 October, the FAI Peninsular Committee issued a third notice to the Regional Committees, Local Federations and groups. It provides a telling insight into the now scarcely concealed authoritarian thinking of the Peninsular Committee:

‘Motives for Intervention: Due to the imperious nature of the circumstances in which we have been placed by the fascist revolt and the struggle we have committed ourselves to in order to crush it, and being unable to speedily and fully realize our ideal aspirations, due to our having to accept collaboration with other sectors, to the purpose and effect of winning the war, so as to contribute for the duration of that war to the maintenance of the liaison and collaboration of antagonistic political parties, and because the people’s frame of mind called for this, we have come out in favor of intervention in organisms of an official nature which we first seek to modify by infusing them with the revolutionary tenor which our inclusion within them demanded…

‘Our pressing and crucial mission: Unless we want our hopes for a free society dashed, and if, as is the case, we aim to have our say in the life of the collectivity, we need to have an organism encapsulating those concepts which are the condensation of a splendid corpus of teaching and which we have so steadfastly clung to and enriched for their realization.

‘The unions, having become hybrid agencies from the political viewpoint, as a result of the circumstances noted earlier, cannot stamp upon their activities anything except the professional function allotted to them; and there necessarily must be a driving force producing the fabulous amount of energy required to shift them in the direction which best suits the preoccupations of mankind with renewal and emancipation. The driving force to which we refer cannot but be the Specific Organization [the FAI].

‘The FAI, an organism whose popular status has grown immeasurably has, as necessarily it must have, an obligation to encompass the membership in keeping with this status and this favorable standing which the Spanish people have awarded it.

‘The expansion of the membership of our organization must be immediate. Our activity in respect of the training of recruits must be so boosted that this is achieved in minimum time. As the acceleration of this recruiting drive may raise serious drawbacks due to the infiltration of persons who would previously not have been granted admission, we can, for the purposes of their adoption, employ the procedure that enables us to make our choice of them once we have them under supervision. This procedure may consist of recruiting them in such a way that, until such time as we are assured of their purity, they are kept in the dark concerning the full activities of the organization.

‘We will have to overhaul the current format of our organization: Our organization on the basis of small affinity groups has produced splendid results in the heroic days of clandestinity and during those times when, without their being clandestine, people’s obtuseness denied it recognition of the value which resided within it, reducing its influence to that enjoyed by its organisms alone.

‘The present moment, which ushers in a new era for our movement, an era when our activities will expand considerably, compels a broad expansion of the base and the mobilization of a large number of militants who may deploy their organizing abilities in order to effect the transformation which we have for so long sought. We must seek out the unknown comrades with ability who live amid anonymity so that they may work alongside those already distinguished in the tasks that have been but outlines. The trade union organization, our beloved CNT, may be an inexhaustible quarry of militants from which we may take those whom our anarchist movement requires.’[228]

On 4 November the logic of collaborationism pursued by the leadership of the Spanish anarchist movement reached its inevitable conclusion. Following a sustained campaign by CNT National Secretary Horacio Prieto, the CNT joined Largo Caballero’s Popular Front government. Caballero’s new Cabinet included four libertarians: two from the reformist unionist tendency of the CNT, Joan Peiró and Juan López, and two anarchists — García Oliver and Federica Montseny of the FAI Peninsular Committee. If the news was met with dismay by rank-and-file and militia papers such as Linea del Fuego, it was defended with bland self-assurance by Solidaridad Obrera who acclaimed it as ‘one of the most momentous events in this country’s political history’. [229] For the ‘influential’ militants of the CNT and FAI their preemptive fusion with the State apparatus to prevent ‘the revolution deviating from its course’ meant the State no longer represented a source of class division or oppression.

For liberal historians such as Raymond Carr, the ‘anarchists’ had no alternative in practice:

‘Their theory could not embrace the circumstances in which they found themselves. The anarcho-syndicalists, always afflicted with a peculiar brand of revolutionary optimism, had assumed they would be the only power on the morrow of the victory of the revolution. The revolution that anarcho-syndicalists had planned as their own work was handed to them in July, suddenly, as a reaction of a right-wing coup against a bourgeois democratic government… Powerful in Barcelona and elsewhere in Catalonia, they were clearly not a predominant force in the Republic as a whole; if they sought to force through “their” revolution they would not merely fail, but would, by a dictatorship, outrage libertarian principles as such and weaken the war effort against “fascism” which, if it triumphed, would destroy both liberal democracy and the CNT alike. Anarcho-syndicalism had not developed, because it had never contemplated, the political strategy of a wartime alliance of bourgeois democrats and workers’ organizations against a counter-revolutionary right.’[230]

Carr is perfectly correct in his assessment here, but it was not the ‘anarchists’ who had ‘no alternative in practice’ — they had, and were proving it with growing success in their collectivization and socialization, to the enormous dismay of authoritarians of every color and hue — it was the leadership who had ‘no alternative in practice’. Administrative power had altered their view of the world to such an extent that they had ceased to act as anarchists. By assuming the responsibilities of government, irrespective of how ‘revolutionary’, ‘progressive’ or antifascist that government might or might not have been, they had ceased to be an independent force. They had voluntarily bound themselves to the State and gone against their own beliefs, values and priorities. They had undergone what sociologists describe as ‘the agentic shift’, i.e., from being champions of freedom, defenders of the revolution and opponents of the authority system, to being agents of that system, not only responsible to it rather than their own membership, but also committed to being part of it.

As the softening-up campaign intensified, an increasing number of rank-and-file anarchist militants began to express their concern more publicly at the unashamedly collaborationist line being taken by the ‘notables’ of the Regional and National Committees of the CNT–FAI. The language of coercive authority began to creep into CNT–FAI official communiqués — words redolent of morality, responsibility, duty, etc. — all concerned with suborning the conflictive interests of the individual to organic authority.

Press censorship, loyalty to the organization and the combined external threat from the bourgeois, Marxist and fascist camps mean there is little documentary evidence to support this thesis or to gauge how widely felt or profound this crisis of confidence was at the time. The anarchist leaders’ entry into the Caballero government permitted that government to transfer safely to Valencia without the risk of a popular anarchist movement taking over the administration of the capital. Safely ensconced in Valencia, the government began with a will to systematically strip away the revolutionary achievements of the people. Its first task was to recover its lost powers from the mainly autonomous regions and local committees. This heightened tension considerably between the leadership and the base by the end of November 1936. Frustration with the total disinterest and lack of contact with the mass of ‘anonymous activists’ of the Catalan leadership became so intense that at one stage the Defense Committees of the Barcelona CNT apparently suggested deposing Mariano Vázquez from the regional secretaryship. [231]

In an attempt to reduce the obviously growing dissension Alejandro Gilabert, Secretary of the Barcelona Local Federation of Anarchist Groups (FAI), issued an Orwellian warning to the more vociferous critics of governmental collaboration among the membership, the so-called ‘uncontrollables’, by casting doubt on their integrity:

‘Some enemies of anarchism, posing as comrades, are now busily talking to us of principles, tactics and ideas. They take the view that anarchism has deviated from its normal course by dallying with the bourgeoisie and reneging upon its anti-statist principles.

‘These criticisms are not prompted by very healthy intentions. They have a double motive that needs to be exposed. Naturally, anarchism in Spain has undergone a change of course. It has amended all of its negative content. When anarchism was still a movement of permanent opposition, it was only to be expected that it should deny all that was established. But we in Spain are facing special circumstances. Here we have ceased to offer opposition so as to become a decisive force. Instead of denying, anarchism has to realize. The ones who realize will be the ones who win.

‘A negative stance, the classic posture of international anarchism, cannot be expected of us Spaniards. The times are too serious for us to waste time looking outwards. Is there any positive example, any effective precedent in the outside world that we can take as our guide? International anarchism carries very little weight when it comes to prescribing guidelines for Spanish anarchism. We have to say with pride that Spain must serve as the example for the world’s anarchists…

‘We anarchists have an obligation and a duty to criticize and to direct the war against fascism and the revolution against capitalism, not merely from below, from the grassroots, but also by assuming positions of responsibility in the organs governing the destinies of the nation.

‘Those who criticize the stance of the anarchists are covert enemies, agents of the bourgeoisie, individuals who do not get much satisfaction from the libertarian influence weighing upon the Spanish people. This is anarchism’s time and we have to accept the struggle with all its consequences, shouldering the full responsibility for these decisive times!’[232]

The justification of the collaborationist theory of the leadership of the CNT and FAI failed to convince many anarchists inside or outside Spain. The foreign anarchists were not subject to the censorship imposed on the confederal press. Writing in the French anarchist press, Sébastien Faure mildly rebuked the CNT–FAI on three main points: participation was not unanimously approved — a sizable minority opposed it, therefore the unity and the moral strength of the movement had been damaged; political parties had gained in influence through government participation, and notions of direct action and class struggle had been weakened; and, finally the federalism of the anarchist movement had been damaged through cooperation with a centralist, authoritarian government. Compared with the hostile comments being published in Le Combat Syndicaliste, the French anarchist paper Terre Libre and André Proudhommeaux’s L’Espagne nouvelle, Faure’s devastatingly lucid observations were conciliatory:

‘If reality contradicts principles, then these principles must be mistaken, in which case we must lose no time abandoning them; we should be honest enough to admit their falseness in public and we should have virtue enough to devote as much ardor to combating them as being active against them as formerly we did in their defense. Similarly, we should strive forthwith to seek out more solid, more just and less fallible principles. If, on the other hand, the principles upon which our ideology and tactics depend still hold, regardless of the circumstances, and are as valid today as ever they were, then we should keep faith with them. To depart, even for a short space of time in exceptional circumstances, from the line our principles indicate we should adopt is to commit a grave error, a dangerous error of judgment. To persist in this error is to commit a grievous mistake, the consequences of which lead on to the temporary jettisoning of principles and, through concession after concession, to the absolute final abandonment of principle. Once again, this is the mechanism, the slippery slope which can lead far astray.’[233]

The anarchist ministers soon discovered their powers to influence events in Cabinet were non-existent. The socialists controlled the six most important ministries — War, State, Housing, Labor, Interior and the Presidency. The CNT and FAI had to settle for four — Industry (Joan Peiró), Trade (Juan López), Justice (García Oliver) and Health (Federica Montseny). Largo Caballero, the enemy of the CNT, retained supreme executive power through his control of the War Council. [234]

By January 1937 Caballero had broken the power of the autonomous regions and converted their administrations into regional sub-governments under central control. His next main task was to restore the monopoly of violence to the State by stabilizing the revolutionary forces and demobilizing or incorporating the predominantly anarchist-controlled militias into regular military units. Militia units not prepared to accept militarization thereby converting to regular army formations, were refused weapons, provisions and pay. ‘Uncontrollable’ rank-and-file militants who openly questioned the policies of the higher committees were criminalized. The CNT and FAI leadership openly backed the government against their own militants and refused to support the militia columns’ urgent requests for men, provisions and munitions. [235] At a meeting convened by the CNT–FAI in Valencia on 4 December to rally support for militarization, García Oliver declared:

‘No matter which organization the workers belong to, they must employ the same methods the enemy uses in order to win.’

The distance between the base and the leadership widened still further. As Faure had foreseen, one concession had led to another until the ‘notables’ had been transformed into the pliable and willing agents of the State. Through their obsession with an illusory antifascist unity with bourgeois liberal and Marxist parties, the CNT and FAI leadership had become totally compromised and prepared the scenario for the final coup de grâce — the ‘May Days’ of 1937.

The apogee of reformist process came in May 1937 in Barcelona when the CNT and FAI leadership ordered their own militants to lay down the arms they had taken up in the face of a campaign of provocation sustained by the PSUC and the Catalan nationalists since early January. This proved to be the key event which brought down the government of Largo Caballero, the CNT–FAI leadership’s sole ally in a predominantly pro-communist Cabinet. It finally broke the tremendous moral influence of the CNT–FAI in its main stronghold — Catalonia. The way was now open for the pro-Russian government of Juan Negrín to destroy what was perhaps the most positive achievement of the revolution — the anarchist-dominated Council of Aragón.

The overt hostility of the new Negrín administration to the FAI led to a major crisis for the anarchist organization in June 1937. Negrín’s newly appointed Minister of Justice, Manuel Irujo, hit upon a legalistic line of attack against the anarchist organization. Because the FAI was an organization that had not been registered prior to February 1936 (in fact it had never been registered, hence its misrepresentation as a ‘secret’ organization), Irujo ruled it could not retain its representation on the Popular Tribunals. An organization not subject to legislation and a declared enemy of state power could hardly be permitted to share in the running of the state apparatus, a share provided by the FAI’s symbiotic relationship to the CNT.

The CNT National Committee complained bitterly about this decision. They also expressed concern about the creation of Special Tribunals, purportedly set up to try cases of espionage and high treason, but whose definition of such offenses was so vague that it gave the police draconian power to quash all alleged anti-government activities. These Star Chamber courts were tailor-made for the repression of ‘uncontrollable’ elements within the POUM and CNT.

Faced with the ‘consequences’ of clandestinity, i.e. becoming a legally ‘non-existent’ body, which meant losing representation on all official bodies, the Peninsular Committee of the FAI convened an urgent National Plenum in Valencia to discuss its legal position in relation to the State and to consider proposals to ‘overhaul’ the ideological principles which had inspired it throughout its 10 years existence and become a legally registered organization. The Plenum, which opened on 4 July, lasted four days. The proposals for reorganization, submitted at the end of this Plenum to a referendum of Regional Plenums, were of historic importance for the Spanish anarchist movement. From a federal body of local autonomous affinity groups, into which members were co-opted, the FAI was to be transformed into a centrally coordinated political organization open to anyone who wished to join and was prepared to cooperate with it.

The May events provided the FAI leaders with the justification they needed for a tightening of organizational discipline and insisting on greater firmness of control. On 17 July, following intensive propaganda recruitment drive, with meetings in Madrid, Cartagena and Castellón, the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist press published the following communiqué from the FAI’s Peninsular Committee:

‘Workers of Spain: The FAI, which has at all times battled for your emancipation, which has been in the van of the struggle for your revolution, which has as its motto in this war against fascism and the international bourgeoisie, the winning of the effective freedom of the proletarian class, opens its door to you.

‘Every revolutionary who fights for freedom against a past of exploitation and calumny, against any attempt at repression and dictatorship, has an honored place. The FAI, an organization which resolved at its latest historic Plenum held in Valencia to broaden its ranks so as to make our well tried Federation the instrument of the revolutionary libertarian proletariat… is not becoming yet another political party and does not abjure its goals nor forswear its methods; it only makes its stand vis a vis the reality of the Spain which shapes the new world, which sheds her finest sons’ unselfish blood, which seeks to make a reality of a system of intercourse apt to its libertarian existence and calls upon all true revolutionaries to carry forward this liberating enterprise.

‘Our FAI seeks the victory of the people, of the proletariat and not the victory of any faction. It seeks the revolution with and for the proletariat. Let those who are with the Spanish revolution, which is the revolution for freedom, swell our ranks. Together, in a mighty iron bloc, we shall march on to victory and together we shall crush the reaction.’[236]

Shortly after, the secretary of the FAI Peninsular Committee announced that the national membership of the organization stood at 160,000.

Alejandro Gilabert of the FAI spelled out what the reorganization would mean in an interview in Solidaridad Obrera:

Question: In what circumstances does the anarchist movement stand at present?

Answer: Iberian anarchism finds itself, at present, in a position to wield and to lay claim to the leadership of the revolution being lived and acted out by our people: for this reason the FAI has agreed to equip itself with a new organizational structure, admitting all persons of libertarian inclinations into its ranks.

Question: What are the implications of the FAI’s new structure?

Answer: In political terms it will produce a real revolution. Because, before a month is out, the FAI will be the most powerful revolutionary movement in Spain, not to mention its thousands of members in Portugal, France and the USA. For, as you must be aware, the Portuguese Anarchist Union, the Federation of Spanish Speaking Anarchist groups in France and the Federation of Spanish Speaking Anarchist groups in the USA are also affiliated to the FAI.

Question: How many members has the FAI in Barcelona?

Answer: With the new format, the FAI will have upwards of 30,000 members in Barcelona alone, for it now turns out that a huge mass of anarchists were not hitherto affiliated to the FAI, even though they spoke on its behalf from time to time.

Question: Does the new format it has adopted imply that the FAI has turned itself into a new political party?

Answer: It will be a revolutionary party, or a specific organization that will suffuse public life so as to provide the proletariat with an instrument to orchestrate its revolutionary feats, driving the revolution forward from all of the popular organisms.

Question: How will the FAI operate in the light of its new format?

Answer: According to the new approach, the FAI will do everything possible to ensure that our revolution may not be the expression of any totalitarian creed, but rather the creature of all the popular antifascist sectors with any influence upon political and social life. As anarchists we are the foes of any totalitarian form of government and the FAI in its new phase of political activity will deploy all of its resources to avert the disfiguration or strangulation of the Iberian revolution by any party dictatorship.

Question: Is the FAI giving up on the introduction of Libertarian Communism?

Answer: We, the anarchists within the discipline of the FAI, want the future of Iberia to be the product of the concerted action of all those sectors who are at one on the creation of a society without class privileges, wherein the organisms of labor, administration and intercourse may be the principal factor in furnishing our country, by means of federal practices, with the channel that will meet the needs of her different regions, for this is the political, social and revolutionary import of the FAI’s new structure according to the agreements reached at the Peninsular Plenum which our organization held in Valencia during the first days of July.[237]

The Peninsular Committee’s proposals that the FAI should become a legally registered political body in order to defend itself and build up a mass anarchist organization met with a hostile reception from a sizable minority of those who had remained affiliated to the organization. Feelings ran particularly high in Catalonia where, during a Regional Plenum of groups on 5–7 August, angry clashes broke out between supporters of the reorganization and those who saw it as a highly dangerous venture which ran directly contrary to the fundamental aims and principles of anarchism. A split was threatened. Dissent had focused on the section of the resolution which stated: ‘… in contrast to our inhibitionist stance of the past, it is the duty of all anarchists to take a place in whatever public institutions may serve to consolidate and to bolster the new state of affairs.’ The militants took this as a clear commitment to political intervention in government and official institutions.

The proposal that FAI personnel delegated to public offices would be obliged to carry out all missions entrusted to them and to report back on their tasks and their work to the committees also caused emotions to run high. ‘Any FAI affiliate’, the resolution added, ‘who may be assigned to take up any public office — regardless of the nature of that office — shall be liable to be disowned or dismissed from that office just as soon as the organization’s appropriate organs may so determine; and the committees shall have an obligation to report back on such instances also.’

Equally worrying was the fact that the tried and tested affinity group structure which had been the core of organized anarchism in Spain since the days of the First International was being abandoned and membership of the FAI was to be thrown open to the vaguely defined ‘like-minded individuals or militants’. Neither was there any reference in the resolution either reaffirming anarchist principles nor denouncing the State. The only reference to anarchism was the brief statement: ‘As anarchists we are the foes of dictatorships, whether they be the dictatorship of castle or party; we are the foes of the totalitarian form of government and we believe that the future of our people will be the result of the concerted actions of all those sectors which collaborate in the creation of a society without privileges, wherein the organisms of labor, administration and intercourse may be the principal factors in furnishing Spain, by means of federal practices, with the channel that will meet the needs of the different regions.’[238]

In spite of the angry denunciations of the betrayal of anarchist principles, majority feeling at the Plenum was to accept the new format in its entirety. But given the size of the minority opposed there was a serious threat to the unity of the movement. A working party was set up to seek a compromise formula that might reconcile the opposing views. The working party drafted a proposition that was eventually approved by all the groups from Catalonia attending the Plenum:

‘[B]eing persuaded that cordiality between members of the anarchist communion is inescapably necessary, we hereby state… That with regard to the result of deliberations held on whether to grant or withhold approval from the proposition drawn up by the Peninsular Plenum, and given that a majority pronounced in favor of it, said proposition is taken as approved: but it being recognized that there has also been great opposition to that proposition, so much so as to degenerate into blatant threat of splitting, it is to be left up to the groups who do not accept it to go on as they have hitherto but bearing in mind that their decisions of an organizational nature will carry the numerical weight appropriate to the size of their membership.‘[239]

The following week, 14 August, a Plenum of delegates from the Barcelona groups agreed that the Local Federation’s Secretariat would call upon each ward separately to appoint the reorganizing commission of the groups. It was also agreed to respect the autonomy of the affinity groups not in agreement with the new structure. These groups were to remain outside the new structure but would have organizational representation at the plenums and congresses.

Although membership of the FAI rocketed, a significant number of groups refused to cooperate with the proposed restructuring of the organization, and a stalemate ensued. FAI spokesman Alejandro Gilabert sought to allay the fears of the opposition groups in an article in Solidaridad Obrera entitled ‘Comrades, the FAI!’

‘It is not out of place to dwell upon the matter. No anarchist should cease to think of the FAI as his own organization. I have said, and reiterated on many occasions, that a large number of anarchists are not organized in the FAI, oblivious of the enormous harm they do the libertarian movement by this attitude. It is not enough to be a militant of the CNT... the anarchist must pursue specifically libertarian activities under the egis and discipline of his own organization.

‘Those comrades who believe that the CNT represents anarchism are sorely mistaken. The CNT is a mass organization which defends the moral and economic interests of the workers, but it is not a specifically anarchist organization, though its objective is Libertarian Communism. Let it be said once and for all, it is the FAI that represents anarchism. It is true there have been innumerable circumstances that forced many anarchists to hold back somewhat from the FAI, but it is no less true that those circumstances have been overcome and beaten. Today there is a place in the FAI for all libertarian elements. The new organizational format with which the FAI has endowed itself offers the movement greater breadth and affords each militant somewhere to be active to some effect.’

The ‘Friends of Durruti’, an important group of rank-and-file activists originating from the Durruti Column, provided the most perceptive analysis of what the changes in the FAI structure meant. Since the early spring of 1937 when their paper, El Amigo del Pueblo, first appeared this ‘conscious minority’ had been the only organized section within the movement to publicly challenge the ever-deepening embroilment of the CNT–FAI ‘administrators’ in collaboration and urge a return to the revolutionary spirit of the summer of 1936. The ‘Friends of Durruti’ saw the real purpose behind the changes that would only benefit self-serving elitists — to justify and perpetuate collaboration. The CNT–FAI leadership had gone so far down the governmental road that the situational etiquette of the working relationship they had established with state functionaries meant they had now become part of the authority system that, as anarchists, they had previously repudiated. They had become part of the problem. To withdraw from government now would be a public admission that their repudiation of Libertarian Communism and all their actions to date had been destructive and negative. The sequential dynamic of their position left them with no choice but to see collaboration through right to the bitter end. If social revolution were to be restored to the agenda it would not come through the official apparatus of the CNT–FAI:

‘The real meaning of the decision [of the FAI Plenum of 5–7 August] is the fact that the band of comrades who recommend this metamorphosis aim not only to see the FAI possessed of an organization structure similar to that of other sectors, but also, on the basis of this ill-considered step, the intention is to perpetuate the governmental collaboration begun after July. At the very moment when a complete reassessment of mistakes is called for the error is compounded and the whole catalog of catastrophes and counter-revolution blessed and absolved.

‘The lesson has been in vain. During the course of the past year it has become clear that it is not possible to share revolutionary responsibility with the petite bourgeoisie and with those parties that, although they claim the label ‘Marxist’, are self-evidently appendages of the deskocracy. But common sense has yet to have its way in our ranks.

‘It has been stated with the utmost clarity that Libertarian Communism is being forsworn for the sake of a rapprochement with antifascist groupings. Excellent! Are these other groupings by some chance forswearing their programs so as to win over the CNT and the FAI

‘It is truly deplorable that certain comrades with a long history in the anarchist movement have yet to grasp the reason why the anarchist groups have been able to work feats of such colossal importance, which may be equaled but cannot possibly be outdone. And it defies understanding that, entering once again a period of oppression, there is this wish to tear up the formula which has opened up so many possibilities to the struggles waged by the ‘But what really disturbs us is the new program that is to take the place of Libertarian Communism. Will the confusion that favors only parvenus and individuals who seek only to ‘get on’ at the expense of the proletariat prevail? Is the aim that our organization should be a mainstay of bourgeois democracy and of foreign capitalism to boot?

‘It appears that this new approach is in line with certain editorials that have appeared in Solidaridad Obrera. There is talk of governing. But how to go about governing? Is there to be a repetition of the hybrid arrangements that have been concocted over the past years of counter-revolution? Will there be government arm in arm with the petite bourgeoisie?

‘A few days ago one of the comrades who advocate this new approach stated publicly that we agreed with a certain sentence or notion voiced by Manuel Azaña in his latest address. But can this possibly be said? Azaña spoke of a regime of freedom. But is anyone going to believe that Azaña can assure the working class of a single atom of freedom? And what is this freedom of which Azaña speaks to us? And how are we anarchists going to see eye to eye with one of the biggest tyrants the proletariat has had to put up with?’[240]

By the end of August 1937, with the breakup of the Council of Aragón, the last stronghold of anarchist practice, the Spanish revolution, perhaps the most profound and inspiring social experiment in recorded history, was over; the Republican bourgeoisie and the Soviet advisers of the Spanish Communist Party were free from the immediate danger from the enemy within — the Catalan Nationalists had been neutralized, the Socialist Party had been split and the influence of the ‘conscious minority’ of anarchists had collapsed — but they (who had seen their leaders acquiesce) were too late. Having surrendered their political, military and economic power to their own leaders, they had seen these leaders acquiesce in the systematic dismantlement of their achievements, the terrorizing, imprisonment and murder of their militants[241], and the perversion of their aspirations for a free society out of all identifiable shape. With nothing left to fight for, it was now just a matter of time before the will to resist collapsed, taking with it the Second Republic and that institutional monstrosity which had grown out of what had once been a great working-class association — the FAI!