I.8 Does revolutionary Spain show that libertarian socialism can work in practice?

Yes. Revolutionary Spain "shows you what human beings are like when they are trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine." [George Orwell, Orwell in Spain, p. 254] At the heart of the transformation were the CNT (the National Confederation of Labour, an anarcho-syndicalist union) and the FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation). As Murray Bookchin put it:

"In Spain, millions of people took large segments of the economy into their own hands, collectivised them, administered them, even abolished money and lived by communistic principles of work and distribution -- all of this in the midst of a terrible civil war, yet without producing the chaos or even the serious dislocations that were and still are predicted by authoritarian 'radicals.' Indeed, in many collectivised areas, the efficiency with which an enterprise worked by far exceeded that of a comparable one in nationalised or private sectors. This 'green shoot' of revolutionary reality has more meaning for us than the most persuasive theoretical arguments to the contrary. On this score it is not the anarchists who are the 'unrealistic day-dreamers,' but their opponents who have turned their backs to the facts or have shamelessly concealed them." ["Introductory Essay," The Anarchist Collectives, Sam Dolgoff (ed.), p. xxxix]

Anarchist and CNT activist Gaston Leval comments that in those areas which defeated the fascist uprising on the 19th of July 1936 a profound social revolution took place based, mostly, on anarchist ideas:

"In Spain, during almost three years, despite a civil war that took a million lives, despite the opposition of the political parties . . . this idea of libertarian communism was put into effect. Very quickly more than 60% of the land was collectively cultivated by the peasants themselves, without landlords, without bosses, and without instituting capitalist competition to spur production. In almost all the industries, factories, mills, workshops, transportation services, public services, and utilities, the rank and file workers, their revolutionary committees, and their syndicates reorganised and administered production, distribution, and public services without capitalists, high-salaried managers, or the authority of the state.

"Even more: the various agrarian and industrial collectives immediately instituted economic equality in accordance with the essential principle of communism, 'From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.' They co-ordinated their efforts through free association in whole regions, created new wealth, increased production (especially in agriculture), built more schools, and bettered public services. They instituted not bourgeois formal democracy but genuine grass roots functional libertarian democracy, where each individual participated directly in the revolutionary reorganisation of social life. They replaced the war between men, 'survival of the fittest,' by the universal practice of mutual aid, and replaced rivalry by the principle of solidarity . . .

"This experience, in which about eight million people directly or indirectly participated, opened a new way of life to those who sought an alternative to anti-social capitalism on the one hand, and totalitarian state bogus socialism on the other." [Op. Cit., pp. 6-7]

Thus about eight million people directly or indirectly participated in the libertarian based new economy during the short time it was able to survive the military assaults of the fascists and the attacks and sabotage of the Communists and Republican state. This in itself suggests that libertarian socialist ideas are of a practical nature.

Lest the reader think that Leval and Bookchin are exaggerating the accomplishments and ignoring the failures of the Spanish collectives, in the following subsections we will present specific details and answer some objections often raised by misinformed critics. We will try to present an objective analysis of the revolution, its many successes, its strong and weak points, the mistakes made and possible lessons to be drawn from the experience, both from the successes and the failures. However, this will hardly do justice to the collectivisation as it "assumed an infinite diversity of forms from village to village, and even in the different firms collectivised in the cities . . . there was an element of improvisation and of the exceptional wartime conditions experienced by the country (i.e., the war against fascism) and the arrangements had their flaws as well as their good points." [Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 223]

This libertarian influenced revolution has (generally) been ignored by historians, or its existence mentioned in passing. Some so-called historians and "objective investigators" have slandered it and lied about (when not ignoring) the role anarchists played in it. Communist histories are particularly unreliable (to use a polite word for their activities) but it seems that almost every political perspective has done this (including liberal, so-called right-wing "libertarian", Stalinist, Trotskyist, Marxist, and so on). So any attempt to investigate what actually occurred in Spain and the anarchists' role in it is subject to a great deal of difficulty. Moreover, the positive role that Anarchists played in the revolution and the positive results of our ideas when applied in practice are also downplayed, if not ignored. Indeed, the misrepresentations of the Spanish Anarchist movement are downright amazing (see Jerome R. Mintz's wonderful book The Anarchists of Casa Viejas and J. Romero Maura's article "The Spanish case" [Anarchism Today, J. Joll and D. Apter (eds.)] for a refutation of many of the standard assertions and distortions about the Spanish anarchist movement by historians). The myths generated by Marxists of various shades are, perhaps needless to say, the most extensive.

All we can do here is present a summary of the social revolution that took place and attempt to explode a few of the myths that have been created around the work of the CNT and FAI during those years. We must stress that this can be nothing but a short introduction to the Spanish Revolution. We concentrate on the economic and political aspects of the revolution as we cannot cover everything. However, we must mention the social transformations that occurred all across non-fascist Spain. The revolution saw the traditional social relationships between men and women, adults and children, individual and individual transformed, revolutionised in a libertarian way. CNT militant Abel Paz gave a good idea of what happened:

"Industry is in the hands of the workers and all the production centres conspicuously fly the red and black flags as well as inscriptions announcing that they have really become collectives. The revolution seems to be universal. Changes are also evident in social relations. The former barriers which used to separate men and woman arbitrarily have been destroyed. In the cafes and other public places there is a mingling of the sexes which would have been completely unimaginable before. The revolution has introduced a fraternal character to social relations which has deepened with practice and show clearly that the old world is dead." [Durruti: The People Armed, p. 243]

The social transformation empowered individuals and these, in turn, transformed society. Anarchist militant Enriqueta Rovira presents a vivid picture of the self-liberation the revolution generated:

"The atmosphere then, the feelings were very special. It was beautiful. A feeling of -- how shall I say it -- of power, not in the sense of domination, but in the sense of things being under our control, of under anyone's. Of possibility. We had everything. We had Barcelona: It was ours. You'd walk out in the streets, and they were ours -- here, CNT; there, comite this or that. It was totally different. Full of possibility. A feeling that we could, together, really do something. That we could make things different." [quoted by Martha A. Ackelsberg and Myrna Margulies Breithart, "Terrains of Protest: Striking City Women", pp. 151-176, Our Generation, vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 164-5]

Moreover, the transformation of society that occurred during the revolution extended to all areas of life and work. For example, the revolution saw "the creation of a health workers' union, a true experiment in socialised medicine. They provided medical assistance and opened hospitals and clinics." [Juan Gomez Casas, Anarchist Organisation: The History of the FAI, p. 192] We discuss this example in some detail in section I.5.12 and so will not do so here. We simply stress that this section of the FAQ is just an introduction to what happened and does not (indeed, cannot) discuss all aspects of the revolution. We just present an overview, bringing out the libertarian aspects of the revolution, the ways workers' self-management was organised, how the collectives organised and what they did.

Needless to say, many mistakes were made during the revolution. We point out and discuss some of them in what follows. Moreover, much of what happened did not correspond exactly with what many people consider as the essential steps in a communist (libertarian or otherwise) revolution. Nor, it must be stressed, did much of it reflect the pre-revolution stated aims of the CNT itself. Economically, for example, the collectives themselves were an unexpected development, one which was based on libertarian principles but also reflected the reality of the situation the CNT militants found themselves in. Much the same can be said of the fact that few collectives reached beyond mutualism or collectivism in spite of the CNT seeking a libertarian communist economy. Politically, the fear of a fascist victory made many anarchists accept collaboration with the state as a lesser evil. However, to dismiss the Spanish Revolution because it did not meet the ideals laid out by a handful of revolutionaries beforehand would be sectarian and elitist nonsense. No working class revolution is pure, no mass struggle is without its contradictions, no attempt to change society is perfect. "It is only those who do nothing who make no mistakes," as Kropotkin so correctly pointed out. [Anarchism, p. 143] The question is whether the revolution creates a system of institutions which will allow those involved to discuss the problems they face, change the decisions reached and correct any mistakes they make. In this, the Spanish Revolution clearly succeeded, creating organisations based on the initiative, autonomy and power of working class people.

For more information about the social revolution, Sam Dolgoff's anthology The Anarchist Collectives is an excellent starting place. Gaston Leval's Collectives in the Spanish Revolution is another essential text. Jose Peirats' Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution and his three volume quasi-official history The CNT in the Spanish Revolution are key works. Vernon Richards' Lessons of the Spanish Revolution is an excellent critical anarchist work on the revolution and the role of the anarchists. Spain 1936-1939: Social Revolution and Counter-Revolution (edited by Vernon Richards) is a useful collection of articles from the time. Abel Paz's Durruti in the Spanish Revolution is a classic biography of Spanish anarchism's most famous militant (this is an expanded version of his earlier Durruti: The People Armed). Emma Goldman's opinions on the Spanish Revolution are collected in Vision on Fire.

Robert Alexander's The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War is a good general overview of the anarchist's role in the revolution and civil war, as is Burnett Bolloten's The Spanish Civil War. Daniel Guérin's anthology No Gods, No Masters has two sections on the Spanish Revolution, one specifically on the collectives. Noam Chomsky's excellent essay "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship" indicates how liberal books on the Spanish Civil War can be misleading, unfair and essentially ideological in nature (this classic essay can be found in Chomsky on Anarchism, The Chomsky Reader, and American Power and the New Mandarins). George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia cannot be bettered as an introduction to the subject (Orwell was in the POUM militia at the Aragón Front and was in Barcelona during the May Days of 1937). This classic account is contained along with other works by Orwell about the conflict in the anthology Orwell in Spain. Murray Bookchin's The Spanish Anarchists is a useful history, but ends just as the revolution breaks out and so needs to be completed by his To Remember Spain and the essay "Looking Back at Spain". Stuart Christie's We, The Anarchists! is an important history of the Iberian Anarchist Federation.

Quite the reverse. More urban workers took part in the revolution than in the countryside. So while it is true that collectivisation was extensive in rural areas, the revolution also made its mark in urban areas and in industry.

In total, the "regions most affected" by collectivisation "were Catalonia and Aragón, where about 70 per cent of the workforce was involved. The total for the whole of Republican territory was nearly 800,000 on the land and a little more than a million in industry. In Barcelona workers' committees took over all the services, the oil monopoly, the shipping companies, heavy engineering firms such as Volcano, the Ford motor company, chemical companies, the textile industry and a host of smaller enterprises . . . Services such as water, gas and electricity were working under new management within hours of the storming of the Atarazanas barracks . . . a conversion of appropriate factories to war production meant that metallurgical concerns had started to produce armed cars by 22 July . . . The industrial workers of Catalonia were the most skilled in Spain . . . One of the most impressive feats of those early days was the resurrection of the public transport system at a time when the streets were still littered and barricaded." Five days after the fighting had stopped, 700 tramcars rather than the usual 600, all painted in the black-and-red colours of the CNT-FAI, were operating in Barcelona. [Antony Beevor, The Spanish Civil War, pp. 91-2]

About 75% of Spanish industry was concentrated in Catalonia, the stronghold of the anarchist labour movement, and widespread collectivisation of factories took place there. As Sam Dolgoff rightly observed, this "refutes decisively the allegation that anarchist organisational principles are not applicable to industrial areas, and if at all, only in primitive agrarian societies or in isolated experimental communities." [The Anarchist Collectives, pp. 7-8] According to Augustin Souchy:

"It is no simple matter to collectivise and place on firm foundations an industry employing almost a quarter of a million textile workers in scores of factories scattered in numerous cities. But the Barcelona syndicalist textile union accomplished this feat in a short time. It was a tremendously significant experiment. The dictatorship of the bosses was toppled, and wages, working conditions and production were determined by the workers and their elected delegates. All functionaries had to carry out the instructions of the membership and report back directly to the men on the job and union meetings. The collectivisation of the textile industry shatters once and for all the legend that the workers are incapable of administrating a great and complex corporation." [Op. Cit., p. 94]

Moreover, Spain in the 1930s was not a backward, peasant country, as is sometimes supposed. Between 1910 and 1930, the industrial working class more than doubled to over 2,500,000. This represented just over 26% of the working population (compared to 16% twenty years previously). In 1930, only 45% of the working population were engaged in agriculture. [Ronald Fraser, The Blood of Spain, p. 38] In Catalonia alone, 200,000 workers were employed in the textile industry and 70,000 in metal-working and machinery manufacturing. This was very different than the situation in Russia at the end of World War I, where the urban working class made up only 10% of the population.

Capitalist social relations had also penetrated the rural economy by the 1930s with agriculture oriented to the world market and approximately 90% of farmland in the hands of the bourgeoisie. [Fraser, Op. Cit., p. 37] So by 1936 agriculture was predominately capitalist, with Spanish agribusiness employing large numbers of labourers who either did not own enough land to support themselves or were landless. The labour movement in the Spanish countryside in the 1930s was precisely based on this large population of rural wage-earners (the socialist UGT land workers union had 451,000 members in 1933, 40% of its total membership, for example). In Russia at the time of the revolution of 1917, agriculture mostly consisted of small farms on which peasant families worked mainly for their own subsistence, bartering or selling their surplus.

Therefore the Spanish Revolution cannot be dismissed as a product of a pre-industrial society. The urban collectivisations occurred predominately in the most heavily industrialised part of Spain and indicate that anarchist ideas are applicable to modern societies. Indeed, comforting Marxist myths aside, the CNT organised most of the unionised urban working class and agricultural workers were a minority of its membership (by 1936, the CNT was making inroads in Madrid, previously a socialist stronghold while the UGT main area of growth in the 1930s was with, ironically, rural workers). The revolution in Spain was the work (mostly) of rural and urban wage labourers (joined with poor peasants) fighting a well developed capitalist system.

In summary, then, the anarchist revolution in Spain has many lessons for revolutionaries in developed capitalist countries and cannot be dismissed as a product of industrial backwardness. The main strength of the anarchist movement was in urban areas and unsurprisingly, the social revolution took place in the most heavily industrialised areas as well as on the land.

Revolutionary anarchism was introduced in Spain in 1868 by Giuseppi Fanelli, an associate of Michael Bakunin, and found fertile soil among both the workers and the peasants. Those historians who gleefully note that Bakunin sent someone who did not speak Spanish to spread his message in Spain forget how close the Latin languages are to each other. Fanelli was more than able to be understood by his Spanish and Catalan speaking hosts who, it should be noted, were already familiar with Proudhon's ideas.

The key reason why Bakunin's ideas gained such ready support in Spain was that they reflected ideas that they had already developed themselves. The peasants supported anarchism because of the rural tradition of Iberian collectivism which had existed for generations. The urban workers supported it because its ideas of direct action, solidarity and free federation of unions corresponded to their needs in their struggle against capitalism and the state. Neither needed to be told that capitalism was oppressive and exploitative or that the state existed to defend this class system. In addition, many Spanish workers were well aware of the dangers of centralisation and the republican tradition in Spain was very much influenced by federalist ideas (coming, in part, from Proudhon's work as popularised by Pi y Margall, soon to become the President of the first Republic). The movement spread back and forth between countryside and cities as urban based union organisers and anarchist militants visited villages and peasants and landless agricultural workers came to industrial cities, like Barcelona, looking for work.

Therefore, from the start anarchism in Spain was associated with the labour movement (as Bakunin desired) and so anarchists had a practical area to apply their ideas and spread the anarchist message. By applying their principles in everyday life, the anarchists in Spain ensured that anarchist ideas became commonplace and accepted in a large section of the population.

This acceptance of anarchism cannot be separated from the structure and tactics of the CNT and its forerunners. The practice of direct action and solidarity encouraged workers to rely on themselves, to identify and solve their own problems. The decentralised structure of the anarchist unions had an educational effect on their members. By discussing issues, struggles, tactics, ideals and politics in their union assemblies, the members of the union educated themselves and, by the process of self-management in the struggle, prepared themselves for a free society. The very organisational structure of the CNT ensured the dominance of anarchist ideas and the political evolution of the union membership. As one CNT militant from Casas Viejas put it, new members "asked for too much, because they lacked education. They thought they could reach the sky without a ladder . . . they were beginning to learn . . . There was good faith but lack of education. For that reason we would submit ideas to the assembly, and the bad ideas would be thrown out." [quoted by Jerome R. Mintz, The Anarchists of Casas Viejas, p. 27]

It was by working in the union meetings that anarchists influenced their fellow workers. The idea that the anarchists, through the FAI, controlled the CNT is a myth. Not all anarchists in the CNT were members of the FAI, for example, while FAI members were also rank-and-file members of the CNT who took part in union meetings as equals. Anarchists who were not members of the FAI indicate this. Jose Borras Casacarosa confirmed that "[o]ne has to recognise that the FAI did not intervene in the CNT from above or in an authoritarian manner as did other political parties in the unions. It did so from the base through militants . . . the decisions which determined the course taken by the CNT were taken under constant pressure from these militants." Jose Campos noted that FAI militants "tended to reject control of confederal committees and only accepted them on specific occasions . . . if someone proposed a motion in assembly, the other FAI members would support it, usually successfully. It was the individual standing of the faista in open assembly." [quoted by Stuart Christie, We, the Anarchists, p. 62]

This explains the success of anarchism in the CNT. Anarchist ideas, principles and tactics, submitted to the union assemblies, proved to be good ideas and were not thrown out. The structure of the organisation, in other words, decisively influenced the content of the decisions reached as ideas, tactics, union policy and so on were discussed by the membership and those which best applied to the members' lives were accepted and implemented. The CNT assemblies showed the validity of Bakunin's arguments for self-managed unions as a means of ensuring workers' control of their own destinies and organisations. As he put it, the union "sections could defend their rights and their autonomy [against union bureaucracy] in only one way: the workers called general membership meetings . . . In these great meetings of the sections, the items on the agenda were amply discussed and the most progressive opinion prevailed." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 247] The CNT was built on such "popular assemblies," with the same radicalising effect. It showed, in practice, that bosses (capitalist as well as union ones) were not needed -- workers can manage their own affairs directly. As a school for anarchism it could not be bettered as it showed that anarchist principles were not utopian. The CNT, by being based on workers' self-management of the class struggle, prepared its members for self-management of the revolution and the new society.

The Spanish Revolution also shows the importance of anarchist education and media. In a country with a very high illiteracy rate, huge quantities of literature on social revolution were disseminated and read out at meetings for those who could not read. Anarchist ideas were widely discussed: "There were tens of thousands of books, pamphlets and tracts, vast and daring cultural and popular educational experiments (the Ferrer schools) that reached into almost every village and hamlet throughout Spain." [Sam Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives, p. 27] The discussion of political, economic and social ideas was continuous, and "the centro [local union hall] became the gathering place to discuss social issues and to dream and plan for the future. Those who aspired to learn to read and write would sit around . . . studying." [Mintz, Op. Cit., p. 160] One anarchist militant described it as follows:

"With what joy the orators were received whenever a meeting was held . . . We spoke that night about everything: of the ruling inequality of the regime and of how one had a right to a life without selfishness, hatred, without wars and suffering. We were called on another occasion and a crowd gathered larger than the first time. That's how the pueblo started to evolve, fighting the present regime to win something by which they could sustain themselves, and dreaming of the day when it would be possible to create that society some depict in books, others by word of mouth. Avid for learning, they read everything, debated, discussed, and chatted about the different modes of perfect social existence." [Perez Cordon, quoted by Mintz, Op. Cit., p. 158]

Newspapers and periodicals were extremely important. By 1919, more than 50 towns in Andalusia had their own libertarian newspapers. By 1934 the CNT had a membership of around one million and the anarchist press covered all of Spain. In Barcelona the CNT published a daily, Solidaridad Obrera (Worker Solidarity), with a circulation of 30,000. The FAI's magazine Tierra y Libertad (Land and Liberty) had a circulation of 20,000. In Gijon there was Vida Obrera (Working Life), in Seville El Productor (The Producer) and in Saragossa Accion y Cultura (Action and Culture), each with a large circulation. There were many more.

As well as leading struggles, organising unions, and producing books, papers and periodicals, the anarchists also organised libertarian schools, cultural centres, co-operatives, anarchist groups (the FAI), youth groups (the Libertarian Youth) and women's organisations (the Free Women movement). They applied their ideas in all walks of life and so ensured that ordinary people saw that anarchism was practical and relevant to them.

This was the great strength of the Spanish Anarchist movement. It was a movement "that, in addition to possessing a revolutionary ideology [sic], was also capable of mobilising action around objectives firmly rooted in the life and conditions of the working class . . . It was this ability periodically to identify and express widely felt needs and feelings that, together with its presence at community level, formed the basis of the strength of radical anarchism, and enabled it to build a mass base of support." [Nick Rider, "The practice of direct action: the Barcelona rent strike of 1931", pp. 79-105, For Anarchism, David Goodway (Ed.), p. 99]

Historian Temma Kaplan stressed this in her work on the Andalusian anarchists. She argued that the anarchists were "rooted in" social life and created "a movement firmly based in working-class culture." They "formed trade unions, affinity groups such as housewives' sections, and broad cultural associations such as workers' circles, where the anarchist press was read and discussed." Their "great strength . . . lay in the merger of communal and militant trade union traditions. In towns where the vast majority worked in agriculture, agricultural workers' unions came to be identified with the community as a whole . . . anarchism . . . show[ed] that the demands of agricultural workers and proletarians could be combined with community support to create an insurrectionary situation . . . It would be a mistake . . . to argue that 'village anarchism' in Andalusia was distinct from militant unionism, or that the movement was a surrogate religion." [Anarchists of Andalusia: 1868-1903, p. 211, p. 207 and pp. 204-5]

The Spanish anarchists, before and after the CNT was formed, fought in and out of the factory for economic, social and political issues. This refusal of the anarchists to ignore any aspect of life ensured that they found many willing to hear their message, a message based around the ideas of individual liberty. Such a message could do nothing but radicalise workers for "the demands of the CNT went much further than those of any social democrat: with its emphasis on true equality, autogestion [self-management] and working class dignity, anarchosyndicalism made demands the capitalist system could not possibly grant to the workers." [J. Romero Maura, "The Spanish case", pp. 60-83, Anarchism Today, D. Apter and J. Joll (eds.), p. 79]

Strikes, due to the lack of strike funds, depended on mutual aid to be won, which fostered a strong sense of solidarity and class consciousness in the CNT membership. Strikes did not just involve workers. For example, workers in Jerez responded to bosses importing workers from Malaga "with a weapon of their own -- a boycott of those using strike-breakers. The most notable boycotts were against landowners near Jerez who also had commercial establishments in the city. The workers and their wives refused to buy there, and the women stationed themselves nearby to discourage other shoppers." [Mintz, Op. Cit., p. 102]

The structure and tactics of the CNT encouraged the politicisation, initiative and organisational skills of its members. It was a federal, decentralised body, based on direct discussion and decision making from the bottom up ("The CNT tradition was to discuss and examine everything", as one militant put it). In addition, the CNT created a viable and practical example of an alternative method by which society could be organised. A method which was based on the ability of ordinary people to direct society themselves and which showed in practice that special ruling authorities are undesirable and unnecessary. This produced a revolutionary working class the likes of which the world has rarely seen. As Jose Peirats pointed out, "above the union level, the CNT was an eminently political organisation . . ., a social and revolutionary organisation for agitation and insurrection." [Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, p. 239] The CNT was organised in such a way as to encourage solidarity and class consciousness. Its organisation was based on the sindicato unico (one union) which united all workers of the same workplace in the same union. Instead of organising by trade, and so dividing the workers into numerous different unions, the CNT united all workers in a workplace into the same organisation, all trades, skilled and unskilled, were in a single organisation and so solidarity was increased and encouraged as well as increasing their fighting power by eliminating divisions within the workforce. All the unions in an area were linked together into a local federation, the local federations into a regional federation and so on. As J. Romero Maura argued, the "territorial basis of organisation linkage brought all the workers from one area together and fomented working-class solidarity over and above corporate [industry or trade] solidarity." [Op. Cit.p. 75]

Thus the structure of the CNT encouraged class solidarity and consciousness. In addition, being based on direct action and self-management, the union ensured that working people became accustomed to managing their own struggles and acting for themselves, directly. This prepared them to manage their own personal and collective interests in a free society (as seen by the success of the self-managed collectives created in the revolution). Thus the process of self-managed struggle and direct action prepared people for the necessities of the social revolution and an anarchist society -- it built, as Bakunin argued, the seeds of the future in the present.

In other words, "the route to radicalisation . . . came from direct involvement in struggle and in the design of alternative social institutions." Every strike and action empowered those involved and created a viable alternative to the existing system. For example, while the strikes and food protests in Barcelona at the end of the First World War "did not topple the government, patterns of organisation established then provided models for the anarchist movement for years to follow." [Martha A. Ackelsberg and Myrna Margulies Breithart, "Terrains of Protest: Striking City Women", pp. 151-176, Our Generation, vol. 19, No. 1, p. 164] The same could be said of every strike, which confirmed Bakunin's and Kropotkin's stress on the strike as not only creating class consciousness and confidence but also the structures necessary to not only fight capitalism, but to replace it.

In summary, then, anarchism gained mass support by anarchists participating in mass struggles and movements, showing that its ideas and ideals were applicable to working class experiences. In fact, to even wonder why anarchism gained support in Spain is, to some degree, to implicitly assume, with Marxists of various shades, that only state socialism reflects the needs of working class people. Discussing the question why the social democratic or Communist movements did not replace anarchism in Spain, historian J. Romero Maura correctly pointed out that this "is based on the false assumption that the anarcho-syndicalist conception of the workers' struggle in pre-revolutionary society was completely at odds with what the real social process signified (hence the constant reference to 'religious' 'messianic' models as explanations)." After discussing and refuting five common suggestions for the success of anarchism in Spain, he concluded that the "explanation of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism's success in organising a mass movement with a sustained revolutionary elan should initially be sought in the very nature of the anarchist conception of society and of how to achieve revolution." [Op. Cit. p. 78 and p. 65]

It was the revolutionary nature of the CNT that created a militant membership who were willing and able to use direct action to defend their liberty. Unlike the Marxist led German workers, organised in a centralised fashion and trained in the obedience required by hierarchy, who did nothing to stop Hitler, the Spanish working class (like their comrades in anarchist unions in Italy) took to the streets to stop fascism.

The revolution in Spain did not "just happen"; it was the result of nearly seventy years of persistent anarchist agitation and revolutionary struggle, including a long series of strikes, protests, boycotts, uprisings and other forms of direct action that prepared the peasants and workers to organise popular resistance to the attempted fascist coup in July 1936 and to take control of society when they had defeated it in the streets.

Martha A. Ackelsberg gives us an excellent short summary of how the industrial collectives where organised:

"Pre-existing structures of worker organisation made possible a workers' take-over of much of the industrial economy, especially in Catalonia . . . Factory committees formed to direct production and co-ordinate with other units within the same industry. Union organisations co-ordinated both the production and distribution of manufactured goods across industries and regions . . . In most collectivised industries, general assemblies of workers decided policy, while elected committees managed affairs on a day-to-day basis." [Free Women of Spain, p. 100]

The collectives were based on workers' democratic self-management of their workplaces, using productive assets that were under the custodianship of the entire working community and administered through federations of workers' associations:

"The collectives organised during the Spanish Civil War were workers' economic associations without private property. The fact that collective plants were managed by those who worked in them did not mean that these establishments became their private property. The collective had no right to sell or rent all or any part of the collectivised factory or workshop. The rightful custodian was the CNT, the National Confederation of Workers Associations. But not even the CNT had the right to do as it pleased. Everything had to be decided and ratified by the workers themselves through conferences and congresses." [Augustin Souchy, The Anarchist Collectives, p. 67]

In Catalonia "every factory elected its administrative committee composed of its most capable workers. Depending on the size of the factory, the function of these committees included inner plant organisation, statistics, finance, correspondence, and relations with other factories and with the community . . . Several months after collectivisation the textile industry of Barcelona was in far better shape than under capitalist management. Here was yet another example to show that grass roots socialism from below does not destroy initiative. Greed is not the only motivation in human relations." [Souchy, Op. Cit., p 95]

Thus the individual collective was based on a mass assembly of those who worked there. This assembly nominated administrative staff who were mandated to implement the decisions of the assembly and who had to report back, and were accountable, to that assembly. For example, in Castellon de la Plana "[e]very month the technical and administrative council presented the general assembly of the Syndicate with a report which was examined and discussed if necessary, and finally introduced when this majority thought it of use. Thus all the activities were known and controlled by all the workers. We find here a practical example of libertarian democracy." [Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, p. 303] Power rested at the base of the collective, with "all important decisions [being] taken by the general assemblies of the workers" which "were widely attended and regularly held . . . if an administrator did something which the general assembly had not authorised, he was likely to be deposed at the next meeting." An example of this process can be seen from the Casa Rivieria company. After the defeat of the army coup "a control committee (Comite de Control) was named by the Barcelona Metal Workers' Union to take over temporary control of the enterprises . . . A few weeks after July 19th, there was the first general assembly of the firm's workers . . . It elected an enterprise committee (Comite de Empresa) to take control of the firm on a more permanent basis. . . . Each of the four sections of the firm -- the three factories and the office staff -- held their own general assemblies at least once a week. There they discussed matters ranging from the most important affairs to the most trivial." [Robert Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, vol. 1, p. 469 and p. 532]

In summary, the collectives in Spain were marked by workplace self-management. They successfully implemented the long-standing libertarian goal of turning industry from an autocracy to a democracy, of replacing wage-labour with free-labour based on the association of equals (see section I.3.1). However, it would be a mistake to assume (as many do, particularly Marxists) that the CNT and FAI considered the creation of self-managed collectives as the end of the revolution. Far from it. While they embodied such key libertarian principles as workers' self-management, they were fundamentally a product of both anarchist ideas and the specific situation in which they were created. Rather than seek a market system of producer co-operatives, the CNT was committed to the full socialisation of the economy and the creation of libertarian communism. The collectives were, as a result, seen as development towards that goal rather than as an end in themselves. Moreover, as historian Ronald Fraser notes, it "was doubtful that the CNT had seriously envisaged collectivisation of industry . . . before this time." [The Blood of Spain, p. 212] CNT policy was opposed to the collectivisation decree of the Catalonian government, for example, which formalised (and controlled) the spontaneous gains of the revolution as expressed by the collectives.

Therefore, the collectives were (initially) a form of "self-management straddling capitalism and socialism, which we maintain would not have occurred had the Revolution been able to extend itself fully under the direction of our syndicates." In other words, the revolution saw the abolition of wage-labour but not of the wages system. Thus capitalism was replaced by mutualism, not the socialism desired by most anarchists (namely libertarian communism). As economic and political development are closely related, the fact that the CNT did not carry out the political aspect of the revolution meant that the revolution in the economy was doomed to failure. As Leval stressed, in "the industrial collectives, especially in the large towns, matters proceeded differently as a consequence of contradictory factors and of opposition created by the co-existence of social currents emanating from different social classes." [Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, pp. 227-8 and p. 227]

That the initial forms of the revolution were not as expected should, perhaps, be unsurprising. After all, no social transformation ever exactly matches the hopes of those who had advocated it and the people had more pressing matters to attend to such as re-starting production and fighting Franco. So it is utterly understandable that the collectives only embodied some and not all aspects of aims of the CNT and FAI! Moreover, social change does not produce instant perfect transformations and the workers "had to build new circuits of consumption and distribution, new types of social relations between the proletariat and the peasantry, and new modes of production." [Abel Paz, Durruti in the Spanish Revolution, p. 451] That process was started, even if it were initially incomplete. That a wider goal was envisioned by these organisations can be seen from the fact that union activists sought to extend the degree of socialisation. So, and again in line with libertarian theory, the collectives also expressed a desire to co-operate within and across industries (see section I.3.5). These attempts at federation and co-ordination will be discussed in next section, along with some of the conclusions that can be drawn from these experiments. For, as would be expected, this attempt to introduce libertarian socialism had its drawbacks as well as successes.

The methods of co-operation tried by the collectives varied considerably. Initially, there were very few attempts to co-ordinate economic activities beyond the workplace. This is hardly surprising, given that the overwhelming need was to restart production, convert a civilian economy to a wartime one and to ensure that the civilian population and militias were supplied with necessary goods. This lead to a situation of anarchist mutualism developing, with many collectives selling the product of their own labour on the market.

This lead to some economic problems as there existed no framework of institutions between collectives to ensure efficient co-ordination of activity and so led to pointless competition between collectives (which led to even more problems). As there were initially no confederations of collectives nor mutual/communal banks this led to the continuation of any inequalities that initially existed between collectives (due to the fact that workers took over rich and poor capitalist firms) and it made the many ad hoc attempts at mutual aid between collectives difficult and often of an ad hoc nature.

Given that the CNT programme of libertarian communism recognised that a fully co-operative society must be based upon production for use, CNT militants fought against this system of mutualism and for inter-workplace co-ordination. They managed to convince their fellow workers of the difficulties of mutualism by free debate and discussion within their unions and collectives. Given this the degree of socialisation varied over time (as would be expected). Initially, after the defeat of Franco's forces, there was little formal co-ordination and organisation. The most important thing was to get production started again. However, the needs of co-ordination soon became obvious (as predicted in anarchist theory and the programme of the CNT). Gaston Leval gives the example of Hospitalet del Llobregat with regards to this process:

"Local industries went through stages almost universally adopted in that revolution . . . [I]n the first instance, comités [committees] nominated by the workers employed in them [were organised]. Production and sales continued in each one. But very soon it was clear that this situation gave rise to competition between the factories . . . creating rivalries which were incompatible with the socialist and libertarian outlook. So the CNT launched the watchword: 'All industries must be ramified in the Syndicates, completely socialised, and the regime of solidarity which we have always advocated be established once and for all.'

"The idea won support immediately." [Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, pp. 291-2]

Another example was the woodworkers' union which had a massive debate on socialisation and decided to do so (the shopworkers' union had a similar debate, but the majority of workers rejected socialisation). According to Ronald Fraser a "union delegate would go round the small shops, point out to the workers that the conditions were unhealthy and dangerous, that the revolution was changing all this, and secure their agreement to close down and move to the union-built Double-X and the 33 EU." [Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain, p. 222]

A plenum of syndicates met in December of 1936 and formulated norms for socialisation in which the inefficiency of the capitalist industrial system was analysed. The report of the plenum stated:

"The major defect of most small manufacturing shops is fragmentation and lack of technical/commercial preparation. This prevents their modernisation and consolidation into better and more efficient units of production, with better facilities and co-ordination . . . For us, socialisation must correct these deficiencies and systems of organisation in every industry . . . To socialise an industry, we must consolidate the different units of each branch of industry in accordance with a general and organic plan which will avoid competition and other difficulties impeding the good and efficient organisation of production and distribution." [quoted by Souchy, Anarchist Collectives, p. 83]

As Souchy pointed out, this document is very important in the evolution of collectivisation, because it indicates a realisation that "workers must take into account that partial collectivisation will in time degenerate into a kind of bourgeois co-operativism." [Op. Cit., p. 83] Thus many collectives did not compete with each other for profits, as surpluses were pooled and distributed on a wider basis than the individual collective.

This process went on in many different unions and collectives and, unsurprisingly, the forms of co-ordination agreed to led to different forms of organisation in different areas and industries, as would be expected in a free society. However, the two most important forms can be termed syndicalisation and confederationalism (we will ignore the forms created by the collectivisation decree as these were not created by the workers themselves).

Syndicalisation (our term) meant that the CNT's industrial union ran the whole industry. This solution was tried by the woodworkers' union after extensive debate. One section of the union, "dominated by the FAI, maintained that anarchist self-management meant that the workers should set up and operate autonomous centres of production so as to avoid the threat of bureaucratisation." However, those in favour of syndicalisation won the day and production was organised in the hands of the union, with administration posts and delegate meetings elected by the rank and file. However, the "major failure . . . (and which supported the original anarchist objection) was that the union became like a large firm" and its "structure grew increasingly rigid." [Fraser, Op. Cit., p. 222] According to one militant, "From the outside it began to look like an American or German trust" and the workers found it difficult to secure any changes and "felt they weren't particularly involved in decision making." [quoted by Fraser, Op. Cit., p. 222 and p. 223] However, this did not stop workers re-electing almost all posts at the first Annual General Assembly.

In the end, the major difference between the union-run industry and a capitalist firm organisationally appeared to be that workers could vote for (and recall) the industry management at relatively regular General Assembly meetings. While a vast improvement on capitalism, it is hardly the best example of participatory self-management in action. However, it must be stressed that the economic problems caused by the Civil War and Stalinist led counter-revolution obviously would have had an effect on the internal structure of any industry and so we cannot say that the form of organisation created was totally responsible for any marginalisation that took place.

The other important form of co-operation was what we will term confederalisation. This system was based on horizontal links between workplaces (via the CNT union) and allowed a maximum of self-management and mutual aid. This form of co-operation was practised by the Badalona textile industry (and had been defeated in the woodworkers' union). It was based upon each workplace being run by its elected management, selling its own production, getting its own orders and receiving the proceeds. However, "everything each mill did was reported to the union which charted progress and kept statistics. If the union felt that a particular factory was not acting in the best interests of the collectivised industry as a whole, the enterprise was informed and asked to change course." This system ensured that the "dangers of the big 'union trust' as of the atomised collective were avoided." [Fraser, Op. Cit., p. 229] According to one militant, the union "acted more as a socialist control of collectivised industry than as a direct hierarchised executive." The federation of collectives created "the first social security system in Spain" (which included retirement pay, free medicines, sick and maternity pay) and a compensation fund was organised "to permit the economically weaker collectives to pay their workers, the amount each collective contributed being in direct proportion to the number of workers employed." [quoted by Fraser, Op. Cit., p. 229]

As can be seen, the industrial collectives co-ordinated their activity in many ways, with varying degrees of success. As would be expected, mistakes were made and different solutions found as an anarchist society can hardly be produced "overnight" (as discussed in section H.2.5, anarchists have always been aware that social transformation takes time). So it is hardly surprising that the workers of the CNT faced numerous problems and had to develop their self-management experiment as objective conditions allowed them to. Unfortunately, thanks to fascist aggression and Communist Party and Republican back-stabbing, the experiment did not last long enough to fully answer all the questions we have about the viability of the solutions tried. Given time, however, we are sure they would have solved the problems they faced for the social experimentation which was conducted was not only highly successful but also rich in promise.

Jose Peirats described collectivisation among the peasantry as follows:

"The expropriated lands were turned over to the peasant syndicates, and it was these syndicates that organised the first collectives. Generally the holdings of small property owners were respected, always on the condition that only they or their families would work the land, without employing wage labour. In areas like Catalonia, where the tradition of petty peasant ownership prevailed, the land holdings were scattered. There were no great estates. Many of these peasants, together with the CNT, organised collectives, pooling their land, animals, tools, chickens, grain, fertiliser, and even their harvested crops.

"Privately owned farms located in the midst of collectives interfered with efficient cultivation by splitting up the collectives into disconnected parcels. To induce owners to move, they were given more or even better land located on the perimeter of the collective.

"The collectivist who had nothing to contribute to the collective was admitted with the same rights and the same duties as the others. In some collectives, those joining had to contribute their money (Girondella in Catalonia, Lagunarrotta in Aragón, and Cervera del Maestra in Valencia)." [The Anarchist Collectives, p. 112]

Dolgoff observed that "supreme power was vested in, and actually exercised by, the membership in general assemblies, and all power derived from, and flowed back to, the grass roots organisations of the people." [Op. Cit., p 119fn] Peirats also noted that the collectives were "fiercely democratic" as regards decision-making. For example, in Ademuz "assemblies were held every Saturday" while in Alcolea de Cinca "they were held whenever necessary." [Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, p. 146] Eyewitness Gaston Leval summarised this explosion in self-management as follows:

"Regular general membership meetings were convoked weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly . . . and these meetings were completely free of the tensions and recriminations which inevitably emerge when the power of decisions is vested in a few individuals -- even if democratically elected. The Assemblies were open for everyone to participate in the proceedings. Democracy embraced all social life. In most cases, even the 'individualists' who were not members of the collective could participate in the discussions, and they were listened to by the collectivists." [The Anarchist Collectives, p 119fn]

Work was "usually done in groups on a co-operative basis. In smaller collectives, all workers gathered to discuss the work needed to be done and how to allocate it. In larger collectives, representatives of each work group would gather at regular intervals. General assemblies of the collective met on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis, and took up issues ranging from hours and wages to the distribution of food and clothing." [Martha A. Ackelsberg in Free Women of Spain, p. 106] It was in these face-to-face assemblies that decisions upon the distribution of resources were decided both within and outwith the collective. Here, when considering the importance of mutual aid, appeals were made to an individual's sense of empathy. As one activist remembered:

"There were, of course, those who didn't want to share and who said that each collective should take care of itself. But they were usually convinced in the assemblies. We would try to speak to them in terms they understood. We'd ask, 'Did you think it was fair when the cacique [local boss] let people starve if there wasn't enough work?' and they said, 'Of course not.' They would eventually come around. Don't forget, there were three hundred thousand collectivists [in Aragón], but only ten thousand of us had been members of the CNT. We had a lot of educating to do." [quoted by Ackelsberg, Op. Cit., p. 107]

In addition, regional federations of collectives were formed in many areas of Spain (for example, in Aragón and the Levant). The federations were created at congresses to which the collectives in an area sent delegates. These congresses agreed a series of general rules about how the federation would operate and what commitments the affiliated collectives would have to each other. The congress elected an administration council, which took responsibility for implementing agreed policy. The Levant Federation was organised as follows:

"The 900 Collectives were brought together in 54 cantonal federations which grouped themselves and at the same time subdivided into five provincial federations which at the top level ended in the Regional Comite . . . [This] was nominated directly by the annual congresses answerable to them and to the hundreds of peasant delegates chosen by their comrades . . . . It was also on their initiative that the Levante Federation was divided into 26 general sections in accordance with specialisations in work and other activities. Those 26 sections constituted a whole which embraced probably for the first time in history outside the State and governmental structures, the whole of social life." [Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, p. 154]

The Aragón Federation statues were agreed at its founding congress in mid-February 1937 by 500 delegates. These stated that there would be "as many county federations" as deemed "necessary for the proper running of the collectives" and the Federation would "hold its ordinary congress at intervals of six months, in addition to whatever extraordinary ones . . . deemed appropriate." New collectives could join after "consent in general assembly of the inhabitants of the collective". The federation aimed to "coordinate the economic potential of the region and . . . be geared towards solidarity in accordance with the norms of autonomy and federalism." [quoted by Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 240]

These federations had many tasks. They ensured the distribution of surplus produce to the front line and to the cities, cutting out middlemen and ensuring the end of exploitation. They also arranged for exchanges between collectives to take place. In addition, the federations allowed the individual collectives to pool resources together in order to improve the infrastructure of the area (building roads, canals, hospitals and so on) and invest in means of production which no one collective could afford. In this way individual collectives pooled their resources, increased and improved the means of production and the social and economic infrastructure of their regions. All this, combined with an increase of consumption in the villages and towns as well as the feeding of militia men and women fighting the fascists at the front.

Rural collectivisations allowed the potential creative energy that existed among the rural workers and peasants to be unleashed, an energy that had been wasted under private property. The popular assemblies allowed community problems and improvements to be identified and solved directly, drawing upon the ideas and experiences of everyone and enriched by discussion and debate. To quote one participant: "We were always prepared to adapt our ideas in every area of collective life if things did not work. That was the advantage of our collectives over state-created ones like those in Russia. We were free. Each village could do as it pleased. There was local stimulus, local initiative." [quoted by Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain, p. 357] As we discuss in the the next section, this enabled rural Spain to be transformed from one marked by poverty and fear into one of increased well-being and hope.

Most basically, self-management in collectives combined with co-operation in rural federations allowed an improvement in quality of rural life. From a purely economic viewpoint, production increased and as historian Benjamin Martin summarises: "Though it is impossible to generalise about the rural land take-overs, there is little doubt that the quality of life for most peasants who participated in co-operatives and collectives notably improved." [The Agony of Modernisation, p. 394] Another historian, Antony Beevor, notes that "[i]n terms of production and improved standards for the peasants, the self-managed collectives appear to have been successful. They also seem to have encouraged harmonious community relations." [The Spanish Civil War, p. 95]

More importantly, however, this improvement in the quality of life included an increase in freedom as well as in consumption. To re-quote the member of the Beceite collective in Aragón: "it was marvellous . . . to live in a collective, a free society where one could say what one thought, where if the village committee seemed unsatisfactory one could say. The committee took no big decisions without calling the whole village together in a general assembly. All this was wonderful." [quoted by Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain, p. 288] As Beevor suggests, "self-managed collectives were much happier when no better off than before. What mattered was that the labourers ran their own collectives -- a distinct contrast to the disasters of state collectivisation in the Soviet Union." [Op. Cit., p. 95] Here are a few examples provided by Jose Peirats:

"In Montblanc the collective dug up the old useless vines and planted new vineyards. The land, improved by modern cultivation with tractors, yielded much bigger and better crops . . . Many Aragón collectives built new roads and repaired old ones, installed modern flour mills, and processed agricultural and animal waste into useful industrial products. Many of these improvements were first initiated by the collectives. Some villages, like Calanda, built parks and baths. Almost all collectives established libraries, schools, and cultural centres." [The Anarchist Collectives, p. 116]

Gaston Leval pointed out that "the Peasant Federation of Levant . . . produced more than half of the total orange crop in Spain: almost four million kilos (1 kilo equals about 2 and one-fourth pounds). It then transported and sold through its own commercial organisation (no middlemen) more than 70% of the crop. (The Federation's commercial organisation included its own warehouses, trucks, and boats. Early in 1938 the export section established its own agencies in France: Marseilles, Perpignan, Bordeaux, Cherbourg, and Paris.) Out of a total of 47,000 hectares in all Spain devoted to rice production, the collective in the Province of Valencia cultivated 30,000 hectares." [Op. Cit., p. 124] To quote Peirats again:

"Preoccupation with cultural and pedagogical innovations was an event without precedent in rural Spain. The Amposta collectivists organised classes for semi-literates, kindergartens, and even a school of arts and professions. The Seros schools were free to all neighbours, collectivists or not. Grau installed a school named after its most illustrious citizen, Joaquin Costa. The Calanda collective (pop. only 4,500) schooled 1,233 children. The best students were sent to the Lyceum in Caspe, with all expenses paid by the collective. The Alcoriza (pop. 4,000) school was attended by 600 children. Many of the schools were installed in abandoned convents. In Granadella (pop. 2,000), classes were conducted in the abandoned barracks of the Civil Guards. Graus organised a print library and a school of arts and professions, attended by 60 pupils. The same building housed a school of fine arts and high grade museum. In some villages a cinema was installed for the first time. The Penalba cinema was installed in a church. Viladecana built an experimental agricultural laboratory. [Op. Cit., p. 116]

Peirats summed up the accomplishments of the agricultural collectives as follows:

"In distribution the collectives' co-operatives eliminated middlemen, small merchants, wholesalers, and profiteers, thus greatly reducing consumer prices. The collectives eliminated most of the parasitic elements from rural life, and would have wiped them out altogether if they were not protected by corrupt officials and by the political parties. Non-collectivised areas benefited indirectly from the lower prices as well as from free services often rendered by the collectives (laundries, cinemas, schools, barber and beauty parlours, etc.)." [Op. Cit., p. 114]

Leval emphasised the following achievements (among others):

"In the agrarian collectives solidarity was practised to the greatest degree. Not only was every person assured of the necessities, but the district federations increasingly adopted the principle of mutual aid on an inter-collective scale. For this purpose they created common reserves to help out villages less favoured by nature. In Castile special institutions for this purpose were created. In industry this practice seems to have begun in Hospitalet, on the Catalan railways, and was applied later in Alcoy. Had the political compromise not impeded open socialisation, the practices of mutual aid would have been much more generalised . . . A conquest of enormous importance was the right of women to livelihood, regardless of occupation or function. In about half of the agrarian collectives, the women received the same wages as men; in the rest the women received less, apparently on the principle that they rarely live alone . . . In all the agrarian collectives of Aragón, Catalonia, Levant, Castile, Andalusia, and Estremadura, the workers formed groups to divide the labour or the land; usually they were assigned to definite areas. Delegates elected by the work groups met with the collective's delegate for agriculture to plan out the work. This typical organisation arose quite spontaneously, by local initiative . . . In addition . . . the collective as a whole met in weekly, bi-weekly or monthly assembly . . . The assembly reviewed the activities of the councillors it named, and discussed special cases and unforeseen problems. All inhabitants -- men and women, producers and non-producers -- took part in the discussion and decisions . . . In land cultivation the most significant advances were: the rapidly increased use of machinery and irrigation; greater diversification; and forestation. In stock raising: the selection and multiplication of breeds; the adaptation of breeds to local conditions; and large-scale construction of collective stock barns." [Op. Cit., pp. 166-167]

Collectivisation, as Graham Kelsey notes, "allowed a rationalisation of village societies and a more efficient use of the economic resources available. Instead of carpenters and bricklayers remaining idle because no wealthy landowner had any use for their services they were put to work constructing agricultural facilities and providing the villages with the kind of social amenities which until then they had scarcely been able to imagine." [Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State, p. 169] Martha A. Ackelsberg sums up the experience well:

"The achievements of these collectives were extensive. In many areas they maintained, if not increased, agricultural production [not forgetting that many young men were at the front line], often introducing new patterns of cultivation and fertilisation . . . collectivists built chicken coups, barns, and other facilities for the care and feeding of the community's animals. Federations of collectives co-ordinated the construction of roads, schools, bridges, canals and dams. Some of these remain to this day as lasting contributions of the collectives to the infrastructure of rural Spain. The collectivists also arranged for the transfer of surplus produce from wealthier collectives to those experiencing shortages, either directly from village to village or through mechanisms set up by regional committees." [The Free Women of Spain, pp. 106-7]

As well as this inter-collective solidarity, the rural collectives also supplied food to the front-line troops:

"The collectives voluntarily contributed enormous stocks of provisions and other supplies to the fighting troops. Utiel sent 1,490 litres of oil and 300 bushels of potatoes to the Madrid front (in addition to huge stocks of beans, rice, buckwheat, etc.). Porales de Tujana sent great quantities of bread, oil, flour, and potatoes to the front, and eggs, meat, and milk to the military hospital.

"The efforts of the collectives take on added significance when we take into account that their youngest and most vigorous workers were fighting in the trenches. 200 members of the little collective of Vilaboi were at the front; from Viledecans, 60; Amposta, 300; and Calande, 500." [Jose Peirats, The Anarchist Collectives, p. 120]

Therefore, as well as significant economic achievements, the collectives ensured social and political ones too. Solidarity was practised and previously marginalised people took direct and full management of the affairs of their communities, transforming them to meet their own needs and desires.

No, they were not. The myth that the rural collectives were created by "terror," organised and carried out by the anarchist militia, was started by the Stalinists of the Spanish Communist Party. More recently, certain right-wing "libertarians" have warmed up and repeated these Stalinist fabrications. Anarchists have been disproving these allegations since 1936 and it is worthwhile to do so again here. As Vernon Richards noted: "However discredited Stalinism may appear to be today the fact remains that the Stalinist lies and interpretation of the Spanish Civil War still prevail, presumably because it suits the political prejudices of those historians who are currently interpreting it." ["Introduction", Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, p. 11] Here we shall present evidence to refute claims that the rural collectives were created by force.

Firstly, we should point out that rural collectives were created in many different areas of Spain, such as the Levant (900 collectives), Castile (300) and Estremadera (30), where the anarchist militia did not exist. In Catalonia, for example, the CNT militia passed through many villages on its way to Aragón and only around 40 collectives were created unlike the 450 in Aragón. In other words, the rural collectivisation process occurred independently of the existence of anarchist troops, with the majority of the 1,700 rural collectives created in areas without a predominance of anarchist militias.

One historian, Ronald Fraser, seems to imply that collectives were imposed upon the Aragón population. As he put it, the "collectivisation, carried out under the general cover, if not necessarily the direct agency, of CNT militia columns, represented a revolutionary minority's attempt to control not only production but consumption for egalitarian purposes and the needs of the war." Notice that he does not suggest that the anarchist militia actually imposed the collectives, a claim for which there is little or no evidence. Moreover, Fraser presents a somewhat contradictory narrative to the facts he presents. On the one hand, he suggests that "[o]bligatory collectivisation was justified, in some libertarians' eyes, by a reasoning closer to war communism than to libertarian communism." On the other hand, he presents extensive evidence that the collectives did not have a 100% membership rate. How can collectivisation be obligatory if people remain outside the collectives? Similarly, he talks of how some CNT militia leaders justified "[f]orced collectivisation" in terms of the war effort while acknowledging the official CNT policy of opposing forced collectivisation, an opposition expressed in practice as only around 20 (i.e., 5%) of the collectives were total. [Blood of Spain, p. 370, p. 349 and p. 366] This is shown in his own book as collectivists interviewed continually note that people remained outside their collectives!

Thus Fraser's attempts to paint the Aragón collectives as a form of "war communism" imposed upon the population by the CNT and obligatory for all fails to co-incide with the evidence he presents.

Fraser states that "[t]here was no need to dragoon them [the peasants] at pistol point [into collectives]: the coercive climate, in which 'fascists' were being shot, was sufficient. 'Spontaneous' and 'forced' collectives existed, as did willing and unwilling collectivists within them." [Op. Cit., p. 349] Therefore, his implied suggestion that the Aragón collectives were imposed upon the rural population is based upon the insight that there was a "coercive climate" in Aragón at the time. Of course a civil war against fascism would produce a "coercive climate" particularly near the front line. However, the CNT can hardly be blamed for that. As historian Gabriel Jackson summarised, while such executions took place the CNT did not conduct a general wave of terror:

"the anarchists made a constant effort to separate active political enemies from those who were simply bourgeois by birth or ideology or economic function. Anarchist political committees wanted to know what the accused monarchists or conservatives had done, not simply what they thought or how they voted . . . There is no inherent contradiction involved in recognising both that the revolution included some violence and that its social and economic results . . . were approved of by the majority of peasants in an area." [quoted in Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, p. 146]

This was a life and death struggle against fascism, in which the fascists were systematically murdering vast numbers of anarchists, socialists and republicans in the areas under their control. It is hardly surprising that some anarchist troops took the law into their own hands and murdered some of those who supported and would help the fascists. Given what was going on in fascist Spain, and the experience of fascism in Germany and Italy, the CNT militia knew exactly what would happen to them and their friends and family if they lost.

The question does arise, however, of whether the climate was made so coercive by the war and the nearness of the anarchist militia that individual choice was impossible. The facts speak for themselves. At its peak, rural collectivisation in Aragón embraced around 70% of the population in the area saved from fascism. Around 30% of the population felt safe enough not to join a collective, a sizeable percentage. If the collectives had been created by anarchist terror or force, we would expect a figure of 100% membership. This was not the case, indicating the basically voluntary nature of the experiment (we should point out that other figures suggest a lower number of collectivists which makes the forced collectivisation argument even less likely). Historian Antony Beevor (while noting that there "had undoubtedly been pressure, and no doubt force was used on some occasions in the fervour after the rising") just stated the obvious when he wrote that "the very fact that every village was a mixture of collectivists and individualists shows that peasants had not been forced into communal farming at the point of a gun." [The Spanish Civil War, p. 206] In addition, if the CNT militia had forced peasants into collectives we would expect the membership of the collectives to peak almost overnight, not grow slowly over time:

"At the regional congress of collectives, held at Caspe in mid-February 1937, nearly 80 000 collectivists were represented from 'almost all the villages of the region.' This, however, was but a beginning. By the end of April the number of collectivists had risen to 140,000; by the end of the first week of May to 180,000; and by the end of June to 300,000." [Graham Kelsey, "Anarchism in Aragón," pp. 60-82, Spain in Conflict 1931-1939, Martin Blinkhorn (ed.), p. 61]

If the collectives had been created by force, then their membership would have been 300,000 in February, 1937, not increasing steadily to reach that number four months later. Neither can it be claimed that the increase was due to new villages being collectivised, as almost all villages had sent delegates in February. This indicates that many peasants joined the collectives because of the advantages associated with common labour, the increased resources it placed at their hands and the fact that the surplus wealth which had in the previous system been monopolised by the few was used instead to raise the standard of living of the entire community.

The voluntary nature of the collectives is again emphasised by the number of collectives which allowed people to remain outside. There "were few villages which were completely collectivised." [Beevor, Op. Cit., p. 94] One eye-witness in Aragón, an anarchist schoolteacher, noted that the forcing of smallholders into a collective "wasn't a widespread problem, because there weren't more than twenty or so villages where collectivisation was total and no one was allowed to remain outside." [quoted by Fraser, Op. Cit., p. 366] Instead of forcing the minority in a village to agree with the wishes of the majority, the vast majority (95%) of Aragón collectives stuck to their libertarian principles and allowed those who did not wish to join to remain outside.

So, only around 20 were "total" collectives (out of 450) and around 30% of the population felt safe enough not to join. In other words, in the vast majority of collectives those joining could see that those who did not were safe. These figures indicate of the basically spontaneous and voluntary nature of the movement as do the composition of the new municipal councils created after July 19th. As Graham Kelsey notes: "What is immediately noticeable from the results is that although the region has often been branded as one controlled by anarchists to the total exclusion of all other forces, the CNT was far from enjoying the degree of absolute domination often implied and inferred." [Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State, p. 198]

In his account of the rural revolution, Burnett Bolloten noted that it "embraced more than 70 percent of the population" in liberated Aragón and that "many of the 450 collectives of the region were largely voluntary" although "it must be emphasised that this singular development was in some measure due to the presence of militiamen from the neighbouring region of Catalonia, the immense majority of whom were members of the CNT and FAI." [The Spanish Civil War, p. 74] This, it should be noted, was not denied by anarchists. As Gaston Leval pointed out, "it is true that the presence of these forces . . . favoured indirectly these constructive achievements by preventing active resistance by the supporters of the bourgeois republic and of fascism." [Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, p. 90]

So the presence of the militia changed the balance of class forces in Aragón by destroying the capitalist state (i.e. the local bosses -- caciques -- could not get state aid to protect their property) and many landless workers took over the land. The presence of the militia ensured that land could be taken over by destroying the capitalist "monopoly of force" that existed before the revolution (the power of which will be highlighted below) and so the CNT militia allowed the possibility of experimentation by the Aragónese population. This class war in the countryside is reflected by Bolloten: "If the individual farmer viewed with dismay the swift and widespread collectivisation of agriculture, the farm workers of the Anarchosyndicalist CNT and the Socialist UGT saw it as the commencement of a new era." [Op. Cit., p. 63] Both were mass organisations and supported collectivisation.

Therefore, anarchist militias allowed the rural working class to abolish the artificial scarcity of land created by private property (and enforced by the state). The rural bosses obviously viewed with horror the possibility that they could not exploit day workers' labour (as Bolloten pointed out "the collective system of agriculture threaten[ed] to drain the rural labour market of wage workers." [Op. Cit., p. 62]). Little wonder the richer peasants and landowners hated the collectives. A report on the district of Valderrobes which indicates popular support for the collectives:

"Collectivisation was nevertheless opposed by opponents on the right and adversaries on the left. If the eternally idle who have been expropriated had been asked what they thought of collectivisation, some would have replied that it was robbery and others a dictatorship. But, for the elderly, the day workers, the tenant farmers and small proprietors who had always been under the thumb of the big landowners and heartless usurers, it appeared as salvation." [quoted by Bolloten, Op. Cit., p. 71]

However, many historians ignore the differences in class that existed in the countryside and explain the rise in collectives in Aragón (and ignore those elsewhere) as the result of the CNT militia. For example, Fraser:

"Very rapidly collectives . . . began to spring up. It did not happen on instructions from the CNT leadership -- no more than had the [industrial] collectives in Barcelona. Here, as there, the initiative came from CNT militants; here, as there, the 'climate' for social revolution in the rearguard was created by CNT armed strength: the anarcho-syndicalists' domination of the streets of Barcelona was re-enacted in Aragón as the CNT militia columns, manned mainly by Catalan anarcho-syndicalist workers, poured in. Where a nucleus of anarcho-syndicalists existed in a village, it seized the moment to carry out the long-awaited revolution and collectivised spontaneously. Where there was none, villagers could find themselves under considerable pressure from the militias to collectivise." [Op. Cit., p. 347]

Fraser implies that the revolution was mostly imported into Aragón from Catalonia. However, as he himself notes, the CNT column leaders (except Durruti) "opposed" the creation of the Council of Aragón (a confederation for the collectives). Hardly an example of Catalan CNT imposed social revolution! Moreover, the Aragón CNT was a widespread and popular organisation, suggesting that the idea that the collectives were imported into the region by the Catalan CNT is simply false. Fraser states that in "some [of the Aragónese villages] there was a flourishing CNT, in others the UGT was strongest, and in only too many there was no unionisation at all." [Op. Cit., p. 350 and p. 348] The question arises of how extensive was that strength. The evidence shows that the rural CNT in Aragón was extensive, strong and growing, so making the suggestion of imposed collectives a false one. In fact, by the 1930s the "authentic peasant base of the CNT . . . lay in Aragón." CNT growth in Zaragoza "provided a springboard for a highly effective libertarian agitation in lower Aragón, particularly among the impoverished labourers and debt-ridden peasantry of the dry steppes region." [Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, p. 203]

Graham Kelsey, in his social history of the CNT in Aragón between 1930 and 1937, provides more evidence on this matter. He points out that as well as the "spread of libertarian groups and the increasing consciousness among CNT members of libertarian theories . . . contribu[ting] to the growth of the anarchosyndicalist movement in Aragón" the existence of "agrarian unrest" also played an important role in that growth. This all lead to the "revitalisation of the CNT network in Aragón". So by 1936, the CNT had built upon the "foundations laid in 1933" and "had finally succeeded in translating the very great strength of the urban trade-union organisation in Zaragoza into a regional network of considerable extent." [Op. Cit., pp. 80-81, p. 82 and p. 134]

Kelsey notes the long history of anarchism in Aragón, dating back to the late 1860s. However, before the 1910s there had been little gains in rural Aragón by the CNT due to the power of local bosses (called caciques):

"Local landowners and small industrialists, the caciques of provincial Aragón, made every effort to enforce the closure of these first rural anarchosyndicalist cells [created after 1915]. By the time of the first rural congress of the Aragónese CNT confederation in the summer of 1923, much of the progress achieved through the organisation's considerable propaganda efforts had been countered by repression elsewhere." ["Anarchism in Aragón", Op. Cit., p. 62]

A CNT activist indicated the power of these bosses and how difficult it was to be a union member in Aragón:

"Repression is not the same in the large cities as it is in the villages where everyone knows everybody else and where the Civil Guards are immediately notified of a comrade's slightest movement. Neither friends nor relatives are spared. All those who do not serve the state's repressive forces unconditionally are pursued, persecuted and on occasions beaten up." [quoted by Kelsey, Op. Cit., p. 74]

However, while there were some successes in organising rural unions, even in 1931 "propaganda campaigns which led to the establishment of scores of village trade-union cells, were followed by a counter-offensive from village caciques which forced them to close." [Op. Cit. p. 67] Even in the face of this repression the CNT grew and "from the end of 1932" there was "a successful expansion of the anarchosyndicalist movement into several parts of the region where previously it had never penetrated." [Kelsey, Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State, p. 185] This growth was built upon in 1936, with increased rural activism which had slowly eroded the power of the caciques (which in part explains their support for the fascist coup). After the election of the Popular Front, years of anarchist propaganda and organisation paid off with "dramatic growth in rural anarcho-syndicalist support" in the six weeks after the general election. This "was emphasised" in the Aragón CNT's April congress's agenda and it was decided to direct "attention to rural problems" while the agreed programme was "exactly what was to happen four months later in liberated Aragón." In its aftermath, a series of intensive propaganda campaigns was organised through each of the provinces of the regional confederation. Many meetings were held in villages which had never before heard anarcho-syndicalist propaganda. This was very successful and by the beginning of June, 1936, the number of Aragón unions had topped 400, compared to only 278 one month earlier. [Kelsey, "Anarchism in Aragón", Op. Cit., pp. 75-76]

This increase in union membership reflected increased social struggle by the Aragónese working population and their attempts to improve their standard of living, which was very low for most of the population. A journalist from the conservative Catholic Heraldo de Aragón visited lower Aragón in the summer of 1935 and noted "[t]he hunger in many homes, where the men are not working, is beginning to encourage the youth to subscribe to misleading teachings." [quoted by Kelsey, Op. Cit., p. 74] Little wonder, then, the growth in CNT membership and social struggle Kelsey indicates:

"Evidence of a different kind was also available that militant trade unionism in Aragón was on the increase. In the five months between mid-February and mid-July 1936 the province of Zaragoza experienced over seventy strikes, more than had previously been recorded in any entire year, and things were clearly no different in the other two provinces . . . the great majority of these strikes were occurring in provincial towns and villages. Strikes racked the provinces and in at least three instances were actually transformed into general strikes." [Op. Cit., p. 76]

So in the spring and summer of 1936 there was a massive growth in CNT membership which reflected the growing militant struggle by the urban and rural population of Aragón. Years of propaganda and organising had ensured this growth in libertarian influence, a growth which was reflected in the creation of collectives in liberated Aragón during the revolution. Therefore, the construction of a collectivised society was founded directly upon the emergence, during the five years of the Second Republic, of a mass trade-union movement infused by anarchist principles. These collectives were constructed in accordance with the programme agreed at the Aragón CNT conference of April 1936 which reflected the wishes of the rural membership of the unions within Aragón (and due to the rapid growth of the CNT afterwards obviously reflected popular feelings in the area):

"libertarian dominance in post-insurrection Aragón itself reflected the predominance that anarchists had secured before the war; by the summer of 1936 the CNT had succeeded in establishing throughout Aragón a mass trade-union movement of strictly libertarian orientation, upon which widespread and well-supported network the extensive collective experiment was to be founded." [Kelsey, Op. Cit., p. 61]

Additional evidence that supports a high level of CNT support in rural Aragón can be provided by the fact that it was Aragón that was the centre of the December 1933 insurrection organised by the CNT. As Bookchin noted, "only Aragón rose on any significant scale, particularly Saragossa . . . many of the villages declared libertarian communism and perhaps the heaviest fighting took place between the vineyard workers in Rioja and the authorities". [Op. Cit., p. 238] It is unlikely for the CNT to organise an insurrection in an area within which it had little support or influence. According to Kelsey, "it was precisely those areas which had most important in December 1933" which were in 1936 "seeking to create a new pattern of economic and social organisation, to form the basis of libertarian Aragón." [Anarchosyndicalism, Libertarian Communism and the State, p. 161]

So the majority of collectives in Aragón were the product of CNT (and UGT) influenced workers taking the opportunity to create a new form of social life, a form marked by its voluntary and directly democratic nature. Far from being unknown in rural Aragón, the CNT was well established and growing at a fast rate: "Spreading out from its urban base . . . the CNT, first in 1933 and then more extensively in 1936, succeeded in converting an essentially urban organisation into a truly regional confederation." [Kelsey, Op. Cit., p. 184]

The evidence suggests that historians like Fraser are wrong to imply that the Aragón collectives were created by the CNT militia and enforced upon a unwilling population. The Aragón collectives were the natural result of years of anarchist activity within rural Aragón and directly related to the massive growth in the CNT between 1930 and 1936. Thus Kelsey is correct to state that libertarian communism and agrarian collectivisation "were not economic terms or social principles enforced upon a hostile population by special teams of urban anarchosyndicalists." [Op. Cit., p. 161] This is not to suggest that there were no examples of people joining collectives involuntarily because of the "coercive climate" of the front line nor that there were villages which did not have a CNT union within them before the war and so created a collective because of the existence of the CNT militia. It is to suggest that these can be considered as exceptions to the rule.

Moreover, the way the CNT handled such a situation is noteworthy. Fraser indicates such a situation in the village of Alloza. In the autumn of 1936, representatives of the CNT district committee had come to suggest that the villagers collectivise (we would like to stress here that the CNT militia which had passed through the village had made no attempt to create a collective there). A village assembly was called and the CNT members explained their ideas and suggested how to organise the collective. However, who would join and how the villagers would organise the collective was left totally up to them (the CNT representatives "stressed that no one was to be maltreated"). Within the collective, self-management was the rule and one member recalled that "[o]nce the work groups were established on a friendly basis and worked their own lands, everyone got on well enough." "There was no need for coercion, no need for discipline and punishment . . . A collective wasn't a bad idea at all." [Fraser, Op. Cit., p. 360] This collective, like the vast majority, was voluntary and democratic: "I couldn't oblige him to join; we weren't living under a dictatorship." [quoted by Fraser, Op. Cit., p. 362] In other words, no force was used to create the collective and the collective was organised by local people directly.

Of course, as with any public good (to use economic jargon), all members of the community had to pay for the war effort and feed the militia. As Kelsey notes, "[t]he military insurrection had come at a critical moment in the agricultural calendar. Throughout lower Aragón there were fields of grain ready for harvesting . . . At the assembly in Albalate de Cinca the opening clause of the agreed programme had required everyone in the district, independent farmers and collectivists alike, to contribute equally to the war effort, thereby emphasising one of the most important considerations in the period immediately following the rebellion." [Op. Cit., p. 164] In addition, the collectives controlled the price of crops in order to ensure that speculation and inflation were controlled. However, these policies as with the equal duties of individualists and collectivists in the war effort were enforced upon the collectives by the war.

Lastly, in support of the popular nature of the rural collectives, we will indicate the effects of the suppression of the collectives in August 1937 by the Communists, namely the collapse of the rural economy. This sheds considerable light on the question of popular attitudes.

In October 1937, the Communist-controlled Regional Delegation of Agrarian Reform acknowledged that "in the majority of villages agricultural work was paralysed causing great harm to our agrarian economy." This is confirmed by Jose Silva, a Communist Party member and general secretary of the Institute of Agrarian Reform, who commented that after Lister had attacked Aragón, "labour in the fields was suspended almost entirely, and a quarter of the land had not been prepared at the time for sowing." At a meeting of the agrarian commission of the Aragónese Communist Party (October 9th, 1937), Silva emphasised "the little incentive to work of the entire peasant population" and that the situation brought about by the dissolution of the collectives was "grave and critical." [quoted by Bolloten, Op. Cit., p. 530] Jose Peirats explained the reasons for this economic collapse as a result of popular boycott:

"When it came time to prepare for the next harvest, smallholders could not by themselves work the property on which they had been installed [by the communists]. Dispossessed peasants, intransigent collectivists, refused to work in a system of private property, and were even less willing to rent out their labour." [Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, p. 258]

If the collectives were unpopular, created by anarchist force, then why did the economy collapse after the suppression? If Lister had overturned a totalitarian anarchist regime, why did the peasants not reap the benefit of their toil? Could it be because the collectives were essentially a spontaneous Aragónese development and supported by most of the population there? This analysis is supported by historian Yaacov Oved:

"Those who were responsible for this policy [of attacking the Aragón collectives], were convinced that the farmers would greet it joyfully because they had been coerced into joining the collectives. But they were proven wrong. Except for the rich estate owners who were glad to get their land back, most of the members of the agricultural collectives objected and lacking all motivation they were reluctant to resume the same effort in the agricultural work. This phenomenon was so widespread that the authorities and the communist minister of agriculture were forced to retreat from their hostile policy." ["Communismo Libertario" and Communalism in the Spanish Collectivisations (1936-1939), pp. 53-4]

Even in the face of Communist repression, most of the collectives kept going. This, if nothing else, proves that the collectives were popular institutions. "Through the widespread reluctance of collectivists to co-operate with the new policy," Oved argues, "it became evident that most members had voluntarily joined the collectives and as soon as the policy was changed a new wave of collectives was established. However, the wheel could not be turned back. An atmosphere of distrust prevailed between the collectives and the authorities and every initiative was curtailed" [Op. Cit., p. 54]

Jose Peirats summed up the situation after the communist attack on the collectives and the legalisation of the collectives as follows:

"It is very possible that this second phase of collectivisation better reflects the sincere convictions of the members. They had undergone a severe test and those who had withstood it were proven collectivists. Yet it would be facile to label as anti-collectivists those who abandoned the collectives in this second phase. Fear, official coercion and insecurity weighed heavily in the decisions of much of the Aragónese peasantry." [Op. Cit., p. 258]

While the collectives had existed, there was a 20% increase in production (and this is compared to the pre-war harvest which had been "a good crop" [Fraser, Op. Cit.p. 370]). After the destruction of the collectives, the economy collapsed. Hardly the result that would be expected if the collectives were forced upon an unwilling peasantry (the forced collectivisation by Stalin in Russia resulted in a famine). Only the victory of fascism made it possible to restore the so-called "natural order" of capitalist property in the Spanish countryside. The same land-owners who welcomed the Communist repression of the collectives also, we are sure, welcomed the fascists who ensured a lasting victory of property over liberty.

So, overall, the evidence suggests that the Aragón collectives, like their counterparts in the Levante, Catalonia and so on, were popular organisations, created by and for the rural population and, essentially, an expression of a spontaneous and popular social revolution. Claims that the anarchist militia created them by force of arms are false. While acts of violence did occur and some acts of coercion did take place (against CNT policy, we may add) these were the exceptions to the rule. Bolloten's summary best fits the facts:

"But in spite of the cleavages between doctrine and practice that plagued the Spanish Anarchists whenever they collided with the realities of power, it cannot be overemphasised that notwithstanding the many instances of coercion and violence, the revolution of July 1936 distinguished itself from all others by the generally spontaneous and far-reaching character of its collectivist movement and by its promise of moral and spiritual renewal. Nothing like this spontaneous movement had ever occurred before." [Op. Cit., p. 78]

Yes. In contradiction to the old capitalist claim that no one will innovate unless private property exists, the workers and peasants exhibited much more incentive and creativity under libertarian socialism than they had under the private enterprise system. This is apparent from Gaston Leval's description of the results of collectivisation in Cargagente in the southern part of the province of Valencia:

"The climate of the region is particularly suited for the cultivation of oranges . . . All of the socialised land, without exception, is cultivated with infinite care. The orchards are thoroughly weeded. To assure that the trees will get all the nourishment needed, the