We, the Anarchists! : A study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927–1937

Notes
Arnold Lunn, Spanish Rehearsal, London, 1937, p. 272 Noam Chomsky, ‘Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship’, American Power and the New Mandarins, New York, 1967, p. 76. Pere Gabriel, Anarquismo en España, in G. Woodcock. Ibid. For the full text of the Preamble and Program of the Alliance see Sam Dolgoff (ed.), Bakunin on Anarchism, Montreal, 1980, pp. 426–428. Diego Abad de Santillán, Contribución a la historia del movimiento obrero español, Mexico, 1962, Vol 1. p. 116. Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, London, 1938, p. 86. Gabriel, op. cit., p. 364. ‘Out of a total membership of 26,585 in 1911, some 12,000 were from Catalonia, some 6,000 were Andalusians and a little more than 1,000 Valencians.’ Ibid. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

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 p... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 22 : 19 July 1936
22: 19 July 1936 A rightist coup was imminent. Precise information as to the date of the military rising had been obtained as early as 13 July by CNT–FAI the CNT Regional Defense Committee of Catalonia from their informants in the barracks. The anti-fascist initiative was taken by the Defense Committee, who began to speed up their plans to resist the military, but their work was deliberately obstructed by a governmental decree on 14 July that ordered the closure of all CNT locals – a gesture intended primarily, no doubt, to appease the right, in the hope of defuzing the growing political tensions. On 16 July the Catalan CNT convened a Regional Plenum to finalize resistance plans. That same morning the Generalitat requested a meeting with representatives of the Regional Committees of the CNT and FAI to discuss collaboration against the approaching ‘fascist danger’. A special five-man committee was appointed t... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 21 : Plots, Plans and the Popular Front
21: Plots, Plans and the Popular Front A series of economic and social crises and major scandals in late 1935 involving the bribery and corruption of government ministers finally brought down the right-wing government of Alejandro Lerroux. The Estraperlo Scandal, the one that attracted most publicity, involved the presentation of gold watches to members of the government and Radical Party in return for the licensing of ‘fixed’ electrical roulette wheels in casinos. New elections were arranged for February 1936. The electoral campaign of the right, centered round Gil Robles, whom President Alcalá Zamora disliked and had been avoiding appointing as prime minister, was aimed at establishing a totalitarian regime. The left, on the other hand, unwilling to go into the elections disunited, formed a ‘Popular Front’ coalition consisting of socialists, republicans, communists and other Marxist groupings, as well as the Cat... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 20 : Interregnum — 1934–1935
20: Interregnum — 1934–1935 In the recriminations that followed October, the CNT’s alleged lack of solidarity was singled out by the Marxist press as a prime contributory factor to the ignominious collapse of the rising. From exile in Paris, the Socialist Party leader, Indalecio Prieto, claimed in a statement to the United Press Agency that one of the reasons for the failure of the rising — which they, the socialist leaders had not wanted, regarding it as premature and inadequately prepared — was the abstention of the CNT. Rafael Vidiella, the Catalan PSOE leader, who wrote in Leviatán, did not share this opinion: ‘So what happened that on the morning of 7 October the Generalitat was to surrender without offering any resistance and without being defended — after a few brief hours…? Quite simply, what happened is that today’s revolutions cannot be... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Legitimacy Crisis
16: Legitimacy Crisis By 1932 it was clear to all sections of the population that liberal democracy was not working the way it was supposed to. Dissatisfaction with government affected everyone, cutting across class and regional lines. The politicizing effect of the democratic surge that accompanied the Republic had led the people to make political demands on the State that could not be met. Disappointment was inevitable and confidence in the Republic began to wither. The year 1932 was dominated by uninterrupted agrarian and industrial unrest. Strikes and violent confrontations were a daily occurrence. The specter of revolution haunted the agrarian, industrial and commercial bourgeoisie and the semi-feudal landed elite of Spain alike. On 29... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Roots: 1872–1910 The First International
1: Roots: 1872–1910 The First International Anarchism in Spain has its roots in the so-called ‘Bourgeois’ revolutionary period of Spanish history between 1868 and 1873 when the pillars of the old semi-feudal regime finally collapsed and the State became transformed into an organ of bourgeois government. The new dominant bourgeois class did not spring from the still small and weak industrial bourgeoisie but from an agrarian-based mercantile bourgeoisie whose political and economic objectives were liberal agrarian capitalism. The tension between a State-supported agrarian capitalism on the one hand and the growing economic power of industrial capitalism which came to a head at this time set the stage for the political and ec... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Author’s Preface ‘With the crowd of commonplace chatterers, we are already past praying for: no reproach is too bitter for us, no epithet too insulting. Public speakers on social and political subjects find that abuse of anarchists is an unfailing passport to popular favor. Every conceivable crime is laid to our charge, and opinion, too indolent to learn the truth, is easily persuaded that anarchy is but another name for wickedness and chaos. Overwhelmed with opprobrium and held up to hatred, we are treated on the principle that the surest way of hanging a dog is to give it a bad name.’ Elisée Reclus Since the official birth of organized anarchism at the Saint Imier Congress of 1872, no anarchist organization has be... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Road to 1936
17: The Road to 1936 As the world crisis bit deeper into the economy, with unemployment affecting almost every working-class family, Spanish workers became increasingly more radicalized. Industrial Barcelona was particularly affected. The number of armed robberies and petty thefts in the city escalated. In response to this crime wave, which was laid at the door of the anarchists by the bourgeois press, the FAI launched a propaganda campaign to convince the workers that individual solutions were not the answer to their problems. Collective action and the revolutionary general strike were emphasized as the only enduring solutions to exploitation and injustice. Coming from such legendary ‘expropriators’ as Durruti, Ascaso, Oliver, ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Secret Society — Revolutionary Elite?
6: Secret Society — Revolutionary Elite? It has often been affirmed by Marxist and liberal historians that the FAI was a secret and elitist organization. In fact, the FAI never constituted a secret organization, nor did its militants operate in any covert way in relation to the CNT or attempt to keep their affiliation secret from nonmembers. Certainly, under the conditions imposed by the dictatorship or in periods of repression, membership of the FAI was not something to broadcast widely, but this is a far cry from the ‘mysterious and powerful… clandestine organization… made up of kindred groups similar to Masonic Lodges under the authority of a secret Mainland Committee’, as claimed by Trotskyist historians ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)