The Friends of Durruti Group: 1937

Preface

Preface to the English-language Edition Agustin Guillamón’s monograph on the Friends of Durruti Group affords readers of English the most comprehensive and thorough exploration and account of the history and ideas of that group. Few groups if any have suffered from such widespread misunderstanding, exaggeration and interested misrepresentation. Guillamón has brought new evidence to light and disposes effectively of some of the most enduring misrepresentations. Liberals, Stalinists, marxists and libertarians have vied with one another in their condemnation and misrepresentation of the group and its message. Italian Stalinists accounted association with the group grounds enough upon which to execute political... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 1 : Introduction and Chronology

1. Introduction and Chronology The Friends of Durruti were an anarchist affinity group founded in March 1937. Its members were militians with the Durruti Column opposed to militarization and/or anarchists critical of the CNT’s entry into the Republican government and the Generalidad government. The historical and political importance of the Friends of Durruti Group lies in its attempt, emanating from within the ranks of the libertarian movement itself (in 1937) to constitute a revolutionary vanguard that would put paid to departures from revolutionary principles and to collaboration with the capitalist State: leaving the CNT to defend and press home the “gains” of July 1936, instead of surrendering them littl... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 2 : Towards July 19

2. Towards July 19 In the elections of February 16, 1936, which the Popular Front won by a narrow margin, the anarchists mounted only token propaganda on behalf of their abstentionist principles and watchwords. According to their revolutionary analysis of the situation, the anarcho-syndicalist leadership took the view that confrontation with the military and with the fascists was inevitable, no matter how the elections might turn out.[21] So they set about making serious preparations for an imminent revolutionary insurrection. The “Nosotros” group, made up of Francisco Ascaso, Buenaventura Durruti, Juan Garcia Oliver, Aurelio Fernandez, Ricardo Sanz, Gregorio Jover, Antonio Ortiz and Antonio Martinez “Valenci... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 3 : From July to May: Uncontrollab...

3. From July to May: Uncontrollables or Revolutionaries? The gestation of May 1937 began one week after the revolutionary events of July 1936. In Catalonia, the revolutionary uprising of the working masses had successfully defeated the military, thrown the State’s administrative and repressive machinery into disarray and removed the bourgeois class from its leadership functions. Not only had the military rising against the Republic been frustrated, but the capitalist State itself had succumbed. The Catalan working class seized weapons from the barracks it had stormed, ensured that the repressive agencies fraternized with the people in arms and introduced a new, revolutionary order[27]: it organized and directed productio... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 4 : Origins of the Friends of Durr...

4. Origins of the Friends of Durruti; The Opposition to Militarization and Balius’s Journalistic Career The Friends of Durruti Group was formally launched on March 17, 1937, although its origins can be traced back to October 1936. The Group was the confluence of two main currents: the opposition on the part of anarchist militians from the Durruti Column (and the Iron Column[36]) to militarization of the people’s militias, and the opposition to governmentalism, best articulated in the writings of Jaime Balius (though not Jaime Balius only) in Solidaridad Obrera between July and November 1936, in Ideas, between December 1936 and April 1937, and in La Noche between March and May 1937. Both currents, the “militia... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 5 : The Friends of Durruti Group f...

5. The Friends of Durruti Group from its Inception up to the May Events In October 1936, the order militarizing the People’s Militias provoked great discontent among the anarchist militians of the Durruti Column on the Aragon front. Following protracted and bitter arguments, in February 1937 around thirty out of the 1,000 volunteer militians based in the Gelsa sector decided to quit the front and return to the rearguard.[60] The agreement was that militians opposed to militarization would be relieved over a fortnight. These then left the front, taking their weapons with them. Back in Barcelona, along with other anarchists (advocates of prosecuting and pursuing the July revolution, and opposed to the CNT’s collabora... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 6 : The May Events

6. The May Events [73] On Saturday, May 1, 1937, there was no May Day demonstration in Barcelona. The Generalidad had announced that this was a day to be worked for the sake of war production, although the real reason was fear of a confrontation between the different labor organizations following heightened tension in several comarcas and localities around Catalonia. That Saturday too the Generalidad council met to look into the worrying public order situation in Catalonia. The council endorsed the effectiveness displayed over the previous few weeks by its councilors for internal security and defense, agreeing to pass a vote of confidence in their ability to resolve outstanding[74] public order business. As the council meeting... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 7 : After May

7. After May The CNT leadership moved that members of the Friends of Durruti Group be expelled, but it never could get that measure ratified by any assembly of unions.[99] The CNT membership sympathized with the revolutionary opposition embodied in the Group. Not that this means that they subscribed either to the activities or the thinking of Friends of Durruti, but they did understand their stance and respected, indeed supported, their criticisms of the CNT leadership.[100] The CNT leadership deliberately used and abused the allegation “marxist,” which was the worst conceivable term of abuse among anarchists and one that was repeatedly used against the Group and more specifically against Balius. There is nothing i... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 8 : Balius’ Pamphlet: Towards a Fr...

8. Balius’ Pamphlet: Towards a Fresh Revolution The pamphlet Hacia una nueva revolución, of which fifty thousand copies were printed,[113] even though it was published clandestinely, fleshed out a program which had until then been rather vague. Balius set to work on the drafting of it sometime around November 1937,[114] and it was published by the Friends of Durruti Group in January 1938.[115] Without doubt, it is the Friends of Durruti’s most extensive text and for this reason deserves a separate comment. The pamphlet’s most significant theoretical contributions had been set out before in editorials in issues Nos. 5, 6, and 7 of El Amigo del Pueblo, which is to say, between July 20 and August 31, 1937... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 9 : Balius’s Thoughts from Exile i...

9. Balius’s Thoughts from Exile in 1939 An exiled Balius had two articles printed in the French anarchist review L’Espagne nouvelle. The first of these marked the third anniversary of July 19, 1936. The second, published in September 1939, by which time France and England had formally declared war on Germany, was devoted to May 1937. Both articles were the result of long, considered reflection by Balius, who signed both articles in his capacity as “secretary of the Friends of Durruti.” Both these articles stand out on account of the precision of the language used and of their central focus upon the fundamental issues raised by the Spanish revolution. Thus, they offer us with the utmost clarity of Balius... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 10 : The Friends of Durruti’s Relat...

10. The Friends of Durruti’s Relations with the Trotskyists [123] It requires only a cursory perusal of El Amigo del Pueblo or Balius’s statements to establish that the Friends of Durruti were never marxists, nor influenced at all by the Trotskyists or the Bolshevik Leninist Section. But there is a school of historians determined to maintain the opposite and hence the necessity for this chapter. For a start, we have to demolish one massive red herring: the so-called “Communist Union Manifesto” supposedly jointly endorsed by the Friends of Durruti, the POUM and the Libertarian Youth: but which, in point of fact, never existed. Its existence is just a fantasy of the historian’s trade. Like Peter Pan... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 11 : Conclusions and Concluding Not...

11. Conclusions and Concluding Note The Friends of Durruti Group was an affinity group, like many another existing in anarcho-syndicalist quarters. It was not influenced to any extent by the Trotskyists, nor by the POUM. Its ideology and watchwords were quintessentially in the CNT idiom: it cannot be said that they displayed a marxist ideology at any time. In any event, they displayed great interest in the example of Marat during the French Revolution, and it may be feasible to speak of their having been powerfully attracted by the assemblyist movement of the Parisian sections, by the sans-culottes, the Enrages and the revolutionary government of Robespierre and Saint-Just. Their objective was nothing less than to tackle the C... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Notes

[122] In 1939 Eduardo Maurico came up with a very similar critique of the Friends of Durruti’s program: For such groups [groups such as the Friends of Durruti] the root of all evil had been the abandonment of ‘principles’ by the leadership. A reversion to ‘wholesome principles’, a return to ‘purity’, ‘a fresh start’ — that in its entirety was the program and the rallying cry of these factions. Now, starting afresh is an utter impossibility. There is more likely to be a reenactment of history. There can be no return to the situation prior to July 19: but the same mistakes can be made in similar circumstances. The biggest mistake that these factions today can make is to fail to d... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

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The Friends of Durruti Group: 1937–1939

By Agustín Guillamón

Entry 6973

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Author : Agustín Guillamón

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