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.)

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 ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Confederación Nacional Del Trabajo (CNT) 1910–23
2: The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) 1910–23 The founding of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo in Barcelona in 1910 was, for many, the most significant event in the history of organized labor in Spain after the formation of the Spanish section of the first International in 1869. Anarchist workers, inspired by the anti-authoritarian, anti-state and federalist principles of syndicalism as outlined in the 1906 Charter of Amiens and, in particular, the writings of French syndicalist Fernando Pelloutier, saw in the direct action and anti-parliamentarism of industrial unionism an ideal vehicle for introducing anarchist ideas to the workers and the means for overthrowing the State. ‘The school for the inte... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Founding Aims
5: Founding Aims The raison d’être of the meeting was: to aggregate, formally, into one peninsular association, the anarchist affinity groups of the three parent organizations, the exiled and dispersed anarchist groups of the Iberian peninsula — Spain’s National Federation of Anarchist Groups, the Federation of Spanish Speaking Anarchist Groups in France and the Portuguese Anarchist Union; and also to propagate anarchist ideas among the people. But most important of all, for the majority of those present, was the need to promote, through the CNT, the parent body to which most of those at the meeting belonged, the Libertarian Communist vision of society and the anti-political and direct-actionist principles adopted at... (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 Bourgeois Republic
11: The Bourgeois Republic The Second Spanish Republic was declared on 14 April 1931. The people of Spain who saw in it the engine of change and the promise of new beginnings welcomed it with enormous popular enthusiasm. Article No. 1 of the new Constitution read: ‘Spain is a democratic republic of workers of every class, organized in a regime of liberty and justice. The powers of all its organs emanate from the people. The Republic represents an integral State, compatible with the autonomy of the municipalities and regions.’ The CNT leadership had contributed much to the new Republic. In a truly Pilatesque speech Joan Peiró confirmed, with obvious satisfaction, that the CNT had acted as midwife to the Republic: ‘Ou... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)