8: A Parallel CNT?

Trotskyist historian Felix Morrow described the FAI as ‘a highly centralized party apparatus through which it maintained control of the CNT’. [57] American liberal historian Gabriel Jackson who depicted it as ‘the tightly organized elite, which, since 1927, had dominated the CNT’ shared this view. [58]

Contemporary participants do not share this view of the FAI. Francisco Carrasquer, a faista, noted:

‘Each FAI group thought and acted as it deemed fit, without bothering about what the others might be thinking or deciding, for there was no intergroup discipline such as was found between communist cells in respect of territory, etc. Secondly, they had no competence, opportunity or jurisdiction — though they might have preferred that — to foist a party line upon the grassroots. They were like the rest, no more. Had it been otherwise how come a Francisco Ascaso would have been allowed to his death in the front ranks.’[59]

With regard to what many observers have referred to as the ‘elite’ of the anarchist movement, it is important to remember that anarchists do not object to the principle of leadership and that organization does not mean submission to concentrated authority. Anarchists have never denied the legitimate authority of a person to exercise leadership in the area in which he or she is knowledgeable. What they do object to is the view that such authority should be coercive.

The anarchist attitude to such authority was expressed clearly and succinctly by Bakunin 60 years earlier:

‘There should be no fixed and constant authority, but mutual and voluntary authority. Society should not indulge or exalt men of genius, nor should it accord them special rights or privileges because: it would often mistake a charlatan for a man of genius; because through such systems of privilege it might even transform a genius into a charlatan; it would establish a master over itself.’[60]

The basic units of the FAI were not individuals but small autonomous affinity groups of anarchist militants. This cohesive quasi-cellular form of association had evolved, gradually, over the period of time it takes for relationships to be established and for mutual trust to grow. The affinity groups consisted, usually, of between three and ten members bound by ties of friendship, and who shared well-defined aims and agreed methods of struggle. Once such a group had come into existence it could, if it so wished, solicit affiliation to the FAI.

The small size of the group implied a minimal structure of decision making, if only on the level of commitment to majority decisions or group consensus. It also permitted the greatest degree of intimacy and trust between those who composed it. The essence of the affinity group, however, is that it is the members who decide who is and who is not a member. The loyalties of group members always lay with each other and the shared ideal, not with the concept of the organization as an organized institution. Also, although small groups can be easily led by force of personality, this drawback was felt to be balanced by the fact that dominant individuals who do emerge are restricted in the area in which they can dominate. The affinity groups were also highly resistant to police infiltration. Even if infiltration did occur, or police agents did manage to set up their own ‘affinity’ groups it would not have been a particularly efficient means of intelligence gathering; the atomic structure of the FAI meant there was no central body to provide an overview of the movement as a whole.

It should also be stressed that affinity groups are not without their drawbacks either. There are as many inherent dangers within small, self-selecting and self-perpetuating groups as there are within larger formal organizations. The CNT, for example, took as its basic unit the workplace, by necessity, and this may have had its weaknesses, but it also had the enormous strength that the workers cooperated daily and struggled against a common and real enemy. They were obliged to get on and they had to practice solidarity. It was this daily practice of cooperation and solidarity that provided the basis of revolutionary unionism. Affinity groups, on the other hand, because of their exclusive and cohesive nature, run the risk of being nothing but ideological groupings or action units, both of which, however necessary at times, are in constant danger of perpetuating the split between class-conscious or revolutionary cadres and the nonmilitant mass of the workers. No matter how idealistic the members of the group may be, there will undoubtedly come a time when conflict develops between obligations to one’s comrades and the society of the outside world. Tension between the ideal and practice becomes inevitable when ideologically committed people form exclusive groupings. An unbridgeable gap is created between them and people outside their immediate circle and ideology; in other words, an ‘affinity group’ can become just as ‘institutionalized’ as a mass organization.

The founders of the FAI were, however, sensitive to the oligarchical dangers inherent in organization and conscious of the perpetual struggle between ‘freedom’ and ‘authority’ with the associated problems of ‘deference’ and ‘obedience’, and made a conscious effort to reduce its negative features to a minimum. In fact the term ‘organization’ hardly fits the FAI: it had no collective identity other than a commitment to libertarian communism as an immediate objective. It did not issue membership cards or collect dues (although voluntary contributions were made) so there was never a roster of members, nor were there any formal procedures for replacing members. Above all, it was not a representative body and involved no delegation of responsibility either within the affinity groups or in the regional or national administrative bodies to those bodies to make decisions on behalf of the collectivity. Drawing on many years of revolutionary experience, the FAI was firmly rooted in federal principles and structured in such a way that its coordinating function did not deprive its constituent members of their autonomous power. ‘The (Peninsular) committee’s title was ‘Liaison Committee’ (comité de relaciones) nothing more. It took no initiatives itself of any sort; it merely passed them on to other comrades and the assemblies approved or rejected them’. [61] In situations where it was necessary for delegates to take decisions, e.g. at plenary meetings during times of crisis or clandestinity, those decisions were required to be ratified by the whole membership who, in effect, constituted the administration.

Not only was there no program of activity, as Francisco Carrasquer noted, [62] other than the agreed immediate objective of toppling capitalism and the State and the introduction of Libertarian Communism, no common ideologically cohesive line was possible. The views, activities and priorities of the different groups covered such a broad range of options that any attempt to impose an official program could only have been a source of division and friction. The public views of the FAI were expressed as general statements by the Peninsular Committee but these in no way bound the sovereign constituent affinity groups, who remained free to pursue their preferred activities and propagate their views within their own spheres of influence.

The FAI was, in its initial phase, simply an ad hoc instrument, and the cutting edge of the CNT. It was a voluntary and mutualist association of militant anarchist unionists who, in response to a perceived threat at a precise point in time, refused to go along with the reformist leadership of the CNT. These anarchist workers combined their energies under the convenient banner of the FAI to achieve a specific concrete end, the defense of the revolutionary objectives and principles of the Confederation. The intention of the faístas was not to exercise dominion, but to carry out the historic role of anarchism, namely to combat authoritarian ideas within the working-class movement and keep alive the anarchist spirit in a CNT increasingly under pressure from a class-collaborationist leadership. Juan Manuel Molina (‘Juanel’), secretary of the Peninsular Committee of the FAI from 1930 to 1932, described it as being, above all, ‘a symbol’ rather than ‘a rigorously structured organization’. He went on to point out that the majority of anarchists although they agreed and sympathized with it ‘and spoke in its name even, they did not in fact belong to it.’[63]

Each individual in the FAI affinity groups, if a wage earner, was expected to join and be active within a CNT-affiliated union. As has already been noted, most of the founding members of the FAI were, first and foremost, CNT militants. As José Llop recalled in conversation with Frank Mintz:

‘The groups organized themselves in such a way that union problems were dealt with by amalgamating the different views of the anarchists who were also members of the union organization, or the co-operatives, etc. The union question predominated in the activities of the groups. That is, the group was set up for the sole purpose of being active within the union ranks.’[64]

In what I have described as the instrumental or youthful and mature period of the organization, 1927–33, the FAI’s commitment to direct action and class war meant it attracted few intellectuals. During this phase most of its affiliates were young and enthusiastic working-class revolutionaries who, based on their own experiences and knowledge, understood that all economic gains were short-term and that the only lasting solution to the alienation and misery of the society in which they lived was immediate social revolution. They were the sworn enemies of all attempts to compromise fundamental anarchist principles through pacts with bourgeois democracy. They championed a that was decentralized and autonomous, based on direct, rank-and-file democracy in mass open assemblies – not one run from a centralized state or administrative apparatus or administrative apparatus run by an intellectual elite with a theoretical view of social processes.

An important binding factor in the relationship between anarchist organization and the union was its federal structure, which directly paralleled that of the CNT, with local, district and regional federations. The groups in a city or town constituted a local federation while the rural groups, combined, formed a district federation. These were administered by a secretariat and a committee composed of one mandated delegate from each affinity group. The local and district federations were obliged to convene regular assemblies of all groups in its area. These usually took place on Sundays under the guise of picnics in the countryside. They were small meetings with one or two delegates from each group and ‘never’, according to Fidel Miró, ‘general assemblies’. [65]

Local and district federations constituted a regional federation. A peninsular liaison committee, in turn, coordinated these. None of these committees, local, district, regional or national, could be described as having a bureaucratic apparatus. Nor did they wield executive power of any description. Their function was purely administrative.

Regional liaison was always conducted by letter:

‘It was never an option to allocate a comrade. The national committee was seconded several times, but always within Catalonia. Later, when funds were more plentiful, this became an option. It would have been interesting to second a comrade to Asturias, for there was a federation of anarchist groups up there. But liaison with the national committee was rather hit and miss. A meeting would have been necessary, but many a time we did not have the wherewithal to send letters.’[66]