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 economic struggles of the period.

The breakup of Church lands and the entailed estates in the middle of the nineteenth century was not simply an anti-clerical measure implemented by a liberal government. It was, in fact, an attempt to force the pace of the liberal revolution and lay the foundations for growth by shifting the economy away from the land to exchange, commerce and speculation. In 1869, there was an estimated active population of around 6.5 million of whom some 2.5 million were thought to be farm laborers and a further 1.5 million wage laborers working either in still fairly small-scale industries such as textiles, mining, steel and construction or in artisanal workshops. This remained fairly stable for the rest of the century. In the period between 1860 and 1900, ‘The sector normally described as the primary one (i.e. agriculture) accounted for 65–60 per cent of the total active population; the secondary (industrial) sector accounted for 15–14 per cent; the tertiary (services) sector for 20–18 per cent.’[3] This implies a population of 4.5 million involved in farming, an industrial population of 1 million and a services sector of 1.25 million.

An important consequence of the desamortización, as the break up of the estates was called, was the rapid and steady influx of large numbers of farm workers into the towns and cities of industrial Spain, particularly around Barcelona. According to Pere Gabriel, if we take urban residents to cover those who live in townships with upwards of 10,000 inhabitants, the urban population of Spain would have grown as follows: ‘from 14 per cent of the total population in 1820, to 16 per cent in 1857, to 30 per cent in 1887 and 32 per cent in 1900.’[4] This rapid urbanization coupled with the equally rapid political changes within a system in which the political and economic contradictions were becoming more apparent forced the pace of mass radicalization and was to exert a powerful stimulus to the growth of the Spanish labor movement.

Libertarian ideas concerning freedom and its related critique of power and arbitrary authority, had been circulating in different regions of Spain in one form or other since the French Revolution: Saint Simonism in Catalonia, Fourierism in Cadiz, etc. Above all, however, it was the influence of the federalist and anti-statist ideas of the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon on Spanish radicals such as Ramón de la Sagra and Francesc Pi i Margall in the 1850s that set the federalist seal on the Spanish labor movement. It was not until 1868, however, with the introduction of Michael Bakunin’s International Alliance of Socialist Democracy into Spain by the Italian Giuseppe Fanelli and others, that anarchism developed from being a doctrine of abstract philosophical speculation on the use and abuse of political power to a theory and organized movement of practical action.

The heart of Bakunin’s criticism of capitalism and statism, which was so enthusiastically received by Spanish radicals, was that in society the existing order was maintained by three forces: the State, religion and property. Because the State had always been the means by which the ruling elite had safeguarded their interests and privileges it could not, therefore, be used as a means of overthrowing capitalism, as the authoritarian socialists claimed. The State, therefore, was the principal area of opposition. Representative democracy was also, Bakunin argued, a massive fraud through which the ruling elite successfully persuaded the masses to build their own prison. Bakunin’s most critical condemnation, however, was reserved for Marxist state socialism, which, he prophesied, would be the most tyrannical regime of all. Power concentrated in the State, he maintained, would inaugurate ‘the rule of scientific men, the most aristocratic, the most despotic, the most arrogant’ of rulers. Anarchism was the only means by which a free society could exist, the State being replaced by free federations, based on local communes, through provinces, nations, continents, and, ultimately, a world federation representing all humanity. These ideas articulated the values, aspirations and traditions of the Spanish people, and were enthusiastically received in the federalist atmosphere of the time. It was the only acceptable alternative to both the interventionist state sought by the agrarian-based mercantile bourgeoisie, to allow them to establish an efficient transportation and communications system which would permit them to break into the growing continental and world markets, and the centralized and bureaucratic structure demanded by the dominant Marxist faction within the International.

The program of Bakunin’s Alliance of Socialist Democracy was received with enthusiasm by working-class radicals and, particularly, by landless peasants. Bakunin’s program held that capitalism was the worst of all economic systems because it upheld property both as a natural right, and as the main legitimizer of the social order. The consequence of this had been a class-divided society in which poverty, ignorance, toil and insecurity had been the lot of the majority, with abundance, satisfaction, power and security for the few. Bakunin’s answer to capitalism was to replace it with a system based on the voluntary association of producers who owned their enterprises in common, the output being divided among the members of the association, not equally, but fairly, according to need.

The revolutionary role of anarchists within the nascent Spanish labor movement was first spelled out clearly in the statutes of the Spanish section of the First International, the International Working Men’s Association (IWMA/AIT), formed on 2 May 1869 under the egis of the Alliance. The program, statutes and structure of this organization were to lay the foundations and set the pattern for the anarchist movement in Spain for many years to come. The Alliance, the first organizational instrument of Spanish anarchism, was the progenitor and inspiration for a long line of mass workers’ organizations whose main distinguishing and characteristic features were its anti-statism and collectivism, which encouraged them to resist the taking or exercise of power by any political factions and all groups which threatened their anti-authoritarian integrity.

The Alliance declared itself atheist, collectivist, federalist and anarchist: ‘Inimical to all despotism, the Alliance acknowledges no form of state and rejects all forms of revolutionary action whose immediate, direct objective is not the triumph over capital of the workers’ cause.’ [5]

Its program called for the complete reconstruction of society by means as different from those proposed by State socialism as the means to the respective ends: the federation of self-governing communes based on workers’ ownership and control of the means of production. The anarchists of the Alliance firmly believed that workers and the oppressed generally must generate and control their own struggles. ‘No savior from on high delivers’ — neither on the picket line nor at the barricades.

The first mass organized labor movement in Spain, the Federación Regional Española (FRE), was conceived and delivered by the Alliance, which endowed it with the revolutionary spirit of anarchism. The founding congress, held in Barcelona in June 1870, was attended by 89 delegates, 74 of whom were Catalan; 50 of them from Barcelona. Among the statutes of the Spanish section of the Alliance was the following explicit statement of anarchist aims in relation to organized labor: ‘The Alliance shall bring whatever influence it can to bear inside the local labor federation to prevent it developing in a reactionary or anti-revolutionary manner.’ [6]

The attitude of the FRE itself toward political activity was spelled out in the following resolution:

‘It being our opinion… That the hopes for well being placed by the people in the conservation of the state has, in fact, taken a toll in lives.

That authority and privilege are the firmest supports underpinning this society of injustice, a society whose reconstitution upon the basis of equality and liberty is a right incumbent on us all.

‘That the system of exploitation by capital favored by the government or the political state is nothing more than the same old, ever-increasing exploitation and forcible subjection to the whim of the bourgeoisie in the name of legal or juridical right, signifying its obligatory nature.’

Following their expulsion by the Marxist faction from the International at the rigged Hague Congress of 2–7 September 1872, the Libertarian Communists and Federalists held their own Congress just over a week later, on 15 September, at Saint Imier. This Congress, with which the FRE associated itself, laid down the basic principles of organized anarchism, principles that were to provide a guideline for future generations of anarchist activists. In them we can clearly see what had inspired and guided anarchist militants through to the present day. They were to have particular influence on the anarchist unionists who, half a century later, were to found the Federación Anarquista Ibérica — the Iberian Anarchist Federation.

The resolutions passed at the Saint Imier Congress were federalist, anti-political and anti-statist. These were not the fruit of abstract philosophical speculation but the distilled essence of earlier hard-won revolutionary experiences.

‘And being persuaded —

That any political organization cannot be anything other than the organization of power to the advantage of one class and to the detriment of the masses, and that should the proletariat seize power, it would wind up as a ruling, exploitative class;

‘This Congress, meeting at Saint Imier, declares:

1. That the demolition of all political power is the primary duty of the proletariat.

2. That any form of political power — even one that is supposedly temporary and revolutionary — destined to effect this demolition cannot be anything other than a trick and would be every bit as dangerous to the proletariat as any of the governments in existence today.

3. That proletarians the world over should fight shy of all compromise along the road of social revolution and must establish an immense solidarity campaign of revolutionary activity outside the parameters of bourgeois politics.’

Another approved resolution read:

‘Every state, which is to say, every government, and every administration of the masses of the people which comes down from above, being of necessity rooted in bureaucracy, and reliant upon armies, espionage and the clergy, will never be able to establish a society organized on the basis of labor and justice, since they are, by their very essence, naturally impelled to oppress the laborer and deny justice… As we see it, the worker will never be able to free himself from oppression in this world unless he substitutes for that absorbent, de-moralizing body, the free federation of all producers’ groups, a federation founded upon solidarity and equality.’