Protests in Russia – For Democracy or Just Against Putin? (2012)

The Material World column from the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

In late 2011 moderately large-scale protests broke out in Russia directed against election fraud in particular and, more generally, against the increasingly authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin. (Putin remained the regime’s dominant figure even when he was taking his turn as prime minister and Dmitry Medvedev kept the presidential seat warm for him.) The protests continue, but on a smaller scale, despite repressive measures adopted after Putin’s inauguration for his third term as president.

It is clear what, or to be more precise, who, the protest movement is against. But what is it for? On May 18 a critical assessment of the movement appeared on the website of the Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists, the Russian section of the International Workers’Association. An English-language version can be found here.

The author of the assessment, who identifies himself only by the initials V.G., first warns against exaggerating the size of the protests. Even at their height, there were “at most a few tens of thousands” of demonstrators in Moscow, while those in provincial cities were numbered in the hundreds or low thousands. “The overwhelming majority of the population have observed the latest round in the struggle for political power with complete indifference.” And they are right, he adds: the interests of working people are not at stake. 

Occupy Abai

The protestors called their movement Occupy Abai in an attempt to create a resemblance to Occupy Wall Street. ‘Abai’ refers to a statue of the nineteenth-century Kazakh poet Abai Kunanbayev in Pure Ponds (Chistye Prudy) Park, close to where the protestors set up a camp, which has now been broken up by the police.

As V.G. points out, any resemblance to Occupy Wall Street is superficial –one of style and organizational structure only, and not political content. The protests in Western Europe and the United States give voice to social and economic grievances directed against the greed of banks and corporations. Most of the Russian protestors just want a “Russia without Putin”. All sorts of political groups are involved in the movement, but ‘bourgeois liberals’ occupy the pivotal position. Other tendencies: leftists, anarchists, nationalists, etc; provide ballast, making the opposition look like a mass movement.

In V.G.’s view, the confrontation is a power struggle between, politicians and capitalists that have close ties with the regime, and those that do not. Among the outsiders one of the most important is Mikhail Prokhorov, a tycoon (‘oligarch’) who stood for president against Putin and did quite well in Moscow, where he outflanked Gennady Zyuganov, candidate of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. According to Forbes magazine, Prokhorov, who has interests in technology, mining, banking and insurance, is worth $18 billion, making him the third richest man in Russia and the thirty-second richest in the world. In his election campaign he openly called for revisions to the Labour Code that would abolish restrictions on working hours, deregulate overtime pay and make it easier for employers to dismiss people.

Democrats and others

Can we say that whatever the economic interests behind the opposition, it is at least a movement for democracy? Opposition to a specific authoritarian regime cannot automatically be equated with support for democracy. This applies especially to countries like Russia with weak democratic traditions. Consider, for instance, the mass movement in Iran that replaced the Shah’s dictatorship by the rule of the ayatollahs.

Some of the many political groups that make up the anti-Putin movement are committed to democracy; others are not. There are two major and overlapping anti-democratic tendencies: those ‘leftists’ who still hope to restore some variant of the Leninist (Soviet) system, and the Russian nationalists and neo-fascists.

At the beginning of 2012 a “civic council” was formed to represent the protest movement. Equal numbers of seats were allocated to three categories of organization –liberals, leftists and nationalists. Considering that only some leftists and not necessarily all liberals can be regarded as democrats, it is doubtful whether democrats constitute a majority on this council.

A shameful tragicomedy

At first some leftists and human rights activists objected to the participation of Russian nationalists in the movement but found themselves in a small minority on the issue. The main counter-argument was that excluding anyone would weaken the movement and make it harder to achieve the common goal –getting rid of Putin. The Russian nationalists made it very clear that they were not going anywhere.  

V.G. is especially scathing about fellow anarchists and former ‘anti-fascist’ activists who are now willing to cooperate with neo-fascists. He calls it “a shameful tragicomedy”. They should have kicked up a big fuss, he says, and declared that unless the nationalists went they would go themselves (“either them or us”).

Some of the campers in Pure Ponds Park moved a resolution to stop ethnic hate propaganda being distributed in the camp. The resolution was not even accepted for discussion. In fact, nationalist thugs were entrusted with the job of guarding the camp and enforcing the camp rules. (Many young nationalists earn a living as bodyguards and security men.) Can you imagine Nazis ‘guarding’ the camp of Occupy Wall Street? V.G. asks sarcastically?     

“The anti-Putin movement,” V.G. concludes, “is just as reactionary … as the Putin regime. Real anarchists and leftists … do not want to choose the lesser of these evils.”

Stefan

Workers’ Control (1965)

From the January 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The phrase “workers’ control” is today frequently used as if it were some sort of definition of socialism. In fact it is nothing of the kind, implying as it does the continued existence of a working class and control of the productive system by units less than society.

The origin of the idea can be found in the 19th century divisions between socialists and anarchists. These saw society from two completely opposed points of view. Socialists saw society and the individual as reciprocal terms; the one couldn’t exist without the other. The anarchists, on the other hand, as a caricature of bourgeois individualism, saw the individual as the important unit, as an isolated being. For them society was a restriction on the freedom of the individual. While socialists recognised the need for an organisation to arrange the affairs of society as a whole, the anarchists were for a free federation of local communities and as much decentralisation as possible.

Socialists did distinguish between society and the state. In their view the State, as a coercive instrument, only flourished in class societies and was the instrument whereby a ruling class controlled society. In the classless society of the future there would be no coercive government machine, central control would be purely administrative. Unfortunately many people, including some who called themselves socialists, overlooked this distinction between society and the state.

In Germany, for example, this was the period of the “cult of the state.” The state was Truth, Freedom and so on; its mission was to free mankind; to do this it must be made democratic. The anarchists, understandably, rejected this view though their view of the state was equally inadequate: for them it was the enemy and root of all evil, Kropotkin correctly labelled the views of the German Social Democrats of this period as state capitalism.

In opposition, Kropotkin put forward the idea that the basic unit of the future society should be the free commune; where necessary, as for running things like the railways, these communes should be linked in a loose federation. This is the doctrine of Anarcho-Communism; it should be contrasted with the socialist view, that the basic unit of future society can only be society itself.

The real origin of the idea of workers’ control comes from another anarchist trend, anarcho-syndicalism. The commune, of course, is a geographical unit. For the anarcho-syndicalists the basic unit was not to be geographical, but industrial, with industrial unions as the basis of the new society. The workers in a particular industry would own and control that industry through their union. Once again, the various unions were to be linked together in a federation. More elaborate plans envisaged an Industrial Republic, a world Federation of Labour. The syndicalists, who were particularly strong in France (whence their name, from the French word for trade union, syndicat), advocated that the workers should directly own and control the means of production. This was opposed to the socialist view, that under socialism the free producers would own and control the means of production as a whole through society. The slogans Workers’ Control, The Mines for the Miners, The Factories to the Workers, are all syndicalist in origin.

At the turn of the century the idea was taken up by the American Daniel De Leon. He put forward the idea of what he called Socialist Industrial Unionism. Under this scheme the means of production were to be collectively owned, but administered by the workers through Industrial Unions. De Leon, the leader of the Socialist Labor Party, was also one of the founders of the I.W.W., the Industrial Workers of the World.

De Leon’s conception of the future society was criticised because it didn’t recognise that society would be the unit, and because it allowed for conflicts of interest between the producers in different industries. Under Socialism, there could be no permanent conflict groups; society as a whole would exercise democratic control over the means of production.

The Russian Revolution was a further source of theories of workers’ control. It often happens that when the capitalist class temporarily lose control through the breakdown of the government machine and general anarchy is threatened, the workers do the obvious: they take over the factories and try to run them themselves. This happened in Russia in 1917-18, in Italy in 1921, in Spain in 1936 and in Hungary in 1956. In Italy and in Spain the experiments rapidly came to an end as soon as the capitalists had regained control. In Hungary the Red Army performed this task. In Russia the Bolsheviks were faced with a fait accompli: the workers had themselves seized the factories. All the Bolsheviks could do was to pass decrees recognising this.

These experiments in workers’ control failed, not least because of the inexperience of the workers, which was not surprising considering the backwardness of Russia at that time. In order to keep production, going the Bolsheviks had to institute one-man management. The idea of workers’ control and workers’ councils still lived on in the minds of dissident Bolsheviks, and some of these developed a coherent theory. These theories received more support in the general reaction against Stalinism after the second world war, when the bureaucratic State Capitalism of Russia was said to have its origins in the decision to end workers’ control in 1918. This was hardly an adequate explanation, of the excesses of Stalin’s rule, but, it did provide some sort of an answer for disillusioned ex-Stalinists.

Ideas of workers’ control became more popular in periods of disorder of the sort described above. The experiences of these periods have provided the basis for many theories’ of workers’ control and of spontaneous revolution without understanding or organisation. They have become part of a general mythology fostered by loose-thinking and an inadequate understanding of the nature of present-day society. These episodes in Russia, Italy and elsewhere have very little relevance for socialism; they were not socialist in character and could not have led to socialism, even if they hadn’t been suppressed.

A little thought shows them to be exceptional and isolated incidents occurring when the control of the capitalist class had been weakened. But workers imbued with capitalist prejudices before the collapse can be expected to keep them during and after it. Without socialist understanding there was bound to be a rapid return to normal capitalism as soon as order was restored. Unfortunately, clear thinking is uncommon on this whole question of workers’ control. It seems to be a slogan full of meaning. A closer examination discloses its inadequacy.

Basically it reflects the anarchist hostility to society and social control as such; it also reflects their naive insistence that everything should be done through voluntary associations rather than permanent machinery. Basically the demand for workers’ control is a demand that the workers on the shop-floor should control production through a workshop organisation rather than through society. Quite apart from the fact that there won’t be any “workers” under Socialism, this demand is unrealistic and Utopian. The productive system of today is incredibly complicated in its world-wide organisation. It could only be controlled by society as a whole through a fairly complex and permanent administrative apparatus. To suggest otherwise is to ignore the nature of the modern world with its large-scale industry.

Adam Buick

The A.B.C. of Anarchism (1955)

From the December 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is Anarchism?
Anarchists say that [it] is the negation of governmental authority and State interference in the life of the individual and of the community as a whole. Anarchists claim that anarchism is a condition of society where all live “in freedom"—a "free" society. As we shall see later this “free" society envisaged by anarchists can mean almost anything.

To the anarchist the cause of most of the evils that beset us today is the existence of government and a coercive state apparatus. The anarchist does not seem to see the State as part of a private property society; as something that has come into existence with the emergence of private property relationships; as an (undesirable and coercive) effect of present-day society. .

The State and Government are THE CAUSE of all our troubles, they say.

Many, but not all anarchists hold that forms of parental, educational and religious authority cause or contribute to the problems of general—and particularly sexual—neurosis. Most, but not all anarchists oppose all forms of external authority—although there are a number of Catholic anarchists in America, and possibly elsewhere, who accept the authority of Rome.

Many kinds of Anarchists
Although most anarchists envisage and desire a future state of society which they call Anarchism (from the Greek word Anarkia, “a condition of being without government") there are many schools of anarchist thought —almost as many as there are anarchists

Some anarchists are Pacifists, whilst others are advocates or defenders of various kinds of violence. Thus, Alexander Berkman in his A.B.C. of Anarchism (first published in America as What Is Communist Anarchism?):—

  "Yes, Anarchists have thrown bombs and have resorted to violence . . . under certain conditions a man may have to resort to violence." (p. 11).

In all fairness tojthe anarchists, bomb-throwing is now no longer popular among anarchists—particularly the British ones.

Many anarchists combine anarchism with syndicalism—the theory of the General Strike and industrial action as a revolutionary method. They are known as anarcho-syndicalists. Whilst followers of Peter Kropotkin—the “Anarchist Prince” (there are no anarchist princes in this country, only Knights!)—and later Alexander Berkman, both Russians, are usually known as “Communist- anarchists" as they also advocate the common or collective ownership of the land and the means and factors of production. Their method of achieving their object is usually through the general strike. It is syndicalist in method, and Communist in objective.

The anarcho-syndicalists advocate the workers’ control of the factories and workshops in which they work, i.e. the coalmines would be controlled and run, and owned, by the coalminers, the railways by the railway men. etc.

As stated above, there are very many kinds and varieties of anarchists and anarchism. Not all anarchists are Communists or Syndicalists. Some are Individualists, other Mutualists. Even today Max Stirner has his advocates, and Proudhon is not yet forgotten.

Whilst Communist-anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists advocate the general strike, or the overthrow or smashing-up of the State, the Individualists and Mutualists do not believe in revolution. They think that our present society will gradually develop into anarchy—almost like the Fabians! The Individualists also uphold the right of the individual to own private property. They advocate “free" competition—truly an utopian bourgeois concept!

Practice what they Preach?
Although all anarchists claim to be opposed to government, the use of the ballot, and the so-called Western and Eastern ways of life, this does not prevent them, when they think fit, supporting these governments, institutions, or “ ways of life."

For example, the well-known Belgian anarchist. G. Emestan. writing in Freedom (1/3/52). said:—

  “The rearmament of Western Europe it necessary. and victory of the West in case of war it desirable: let us be frankly and sincerely with Truman."

Or more important, the support that the anarchists gave to the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks.

From the beginning the Socialist Party said that the Russian Revolution was a “bourgeois” revolution; that it would not and could not emancipate the workers and peasants of Russia from poverty and exploitation; but that it would result in a new class society—a society of new rulers and oppressors. But not the anarchists.

Most of the anarchists all over the world supported both the February and October “revolutions” of 1917.

Nowadays, like the followers of the late Leon Trotsky, they say that the revolution was “betrayed”; it failed. Alexander Berkman, in his A.B.C. of Anarchism, supported both the 1917 revolutions but admitted that “ the masses lacked both consciousness and definite purpose”! But. the following admission of Emma Goldman, another well- known Russian anarchist, should damn the anarchists for all time. In “Trotsky Protests Too Much” (published in Glasgow by the “Anarchist-Communist Federation ”) she wrote:—

   ‘‘During the four years’ civil war in Russia the Anarchists almost to a man stood by the Bolsheviki, though they grew more daily conscious of the impending collapse of the Revolution. They felt in duty bound to keep silent and to avoid everything that would bring aid and comfort to the enemies of the Revolution.” (p. 15).

When it suits them anarchists will support any movement or form of government, democratic or totalitarian.

But it was not only during the first few years of the Communist Government in Soviet Russia that some of the anarchists supported its leaders. Writing in 1938, during the Spanish Civil War, Felix Morrow in his book, “Revolution and Counter-revolution in Spain,” shows us how low anarchists can sink:—

  “Currying favour with Stalin, the Anarchist leaders had been guilty of such statements as that of Montseny: 'Lenin was not the true builder of Russia, but rather Stalin, with his practical realism.’ The Anarchist press had preserved a dead silence about the Moscow trials and purges, publishing only the official news reports. The C.N.T. (Anarchist 'trade unions’) leaders even ceased to defend their Anarchist comrades in Russia when the Anarchist, Erich Muehson, was murdered by Hitler, and his wife sought refuge in the Soviet Union, only to be imprisoned shortly after her arrival, the C.N.T leadership stifled the protest movement in the C.N.T. ranks. Even when the Red generals were shot, the C.N.T. organs published only the official bulletins." (pp. 127-8).

At this time prominent anarchist leaders in Spain were helping the Republican Government in its war with Franco and the German and Italian Interventionists. Anarchist leaders, like Montseny, were either—or had recently been—members of the Central Madrid or Catalan Governments. And the Government had, for some time past, been receiving war supplies from the Soviet Government.

Anarchists in Spain
Ever since the days of Bakounine and the break-up of the first Working Men’s International, the anarchists have been most numerous in Spain—probably the most backward nation in Europe; which, perhaps, explains why the anarchists are so strong there.

The majority of anarchists in Spain were also members of the C.N.T. (Confederación Nacional de Trabajo— the National Confederation of Labour). Its leaders were also often prominent members of the F.A.I. (Federación Anarquista Iberia—the Anarchist Federation of Iberia).

According to Felix Morrow the C.N.T. leadership was sympathetic to the Russian Revolution, and in fact sent a delegate to the Comintern Congress in 1921. Although supposedly opposed to politics and political parties, Spanish anarchism had, in the F.A.I., a highly centralised Party apparatus, through which it could maintain control of the C.N.T.

In the February, 1936, election in Spain the anarchists, who had in the past, abstained (anarchists are supposed to be opposed to any form of voting) voted for the Popular Front. The “left” parties increased their vote by about a million over the 1933 election. D. A. Santillan admits that this can, to a great extent, be put down to the anarchist vote. Santillan was a leading member of the F.A.I., organiser of the anti-Fascist militias in Catalonia, and later an anarchist minister in the Catalan Government. In his book, “Porque Perdimos la Guerra,” he says:—

  “We gave power to the Left parties, convinced that in the circumstances they represented a lesser evil.”

We seem to have heard this “lesser evil” argument before somewhere!

Afterwards anarchists entered both the Madrid and Catalan Governments. On November 4th, 1936, four members of the C.N.T. entered the Caballero Government.

Supposed opponents of war, government, the ballot box and “ democracy,” the anarchists in Spain—and elsewhere—have supported all these things.

They are neither consistent nor logical. They are both opportunist and utopian.

In Britain, unlike Spain and elsewhere, they are of little consequence, but their views are similar. Their groups afford a welcome to frustrated “intellectuals” who are tired of government interference and State authority; (the continual docketing, the red-tape, and conscription, that is part of our lives under present-day Capitalism.

Unlike the Socialist the anarchists do not have a definite set of principles—in fact they are governed by expediency—or a practical objective—socialism.

Peter E. Newell

Twenty Five Years After (1961)

Book Review from the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas, Eyre & Spottiswood. 42s.

The Spanish Civil War began 25 years ago and Mr. Hugh Thomas thinks that the time has come when a study could usefully be made of a tragedy which though dwarfed by subsequent world events, nevertheless cost 600,000 lives, including about 100,000 “who may be supposed to have died by murder or summary execution”

He has made a very good job of collecting and presenting information on the complex and fast-moving events of the three-year Civil War. In his 720 pages he carries the reader forward from the election of the Popular Front Government in 1936 to the revolt that faced it soon afterwards; through the military campaigns with their alternating advantage first to one side then the other, to the final collapse of the Republican forces in March, 1939. Six months later the principal governments that had helped or hindered the Republican forces in Spain were involved in the World War—all except Spain itself, under the-victor of the civil war, General Franco.

The League of Nations which had been impotent to do anything about the “local” war was brushed aside by World War II. Yet when that war ended and the United Nations inherited the shabby mantle of the League, Spanish Republican Exiles had still learned so little that they were hoping that the new organisation would dispose of Franco.

It might have been expected that the world war and all that has happened since would have destroyed interest in the Spanish Civil War, but the steady stream of books proves otherwise. It is not the size and destructiveness of the war, but the passions aroused in participants and onlookers alike that make it still memorable. There is also the inevitable speculation about what would have happened if only some politician or party had turned in a different direction at the crucial moment.

It is memorable, too, for the flood of outside volunteers who wanted to help.

Some adventurers were bound to be attracted to Spain in the Civil War, but the majority of the 40,000 volunteers from France, Germany, Britain and U.S.A. and many other countries who joined the International Brigades were men anxious to fight and, if necessary, willing to die, “for democracy and against Fascism.” (Doubtless the same idealistic motives sent Irish and other Catholic volunteers to fight for Franco “in defence of religion").

Many soon became disenchanted when they found that war is not just dying, but living in mud and blood and hardship, and enduring the indignities of army discipline—they were learning again what their fathers who volunteered for war in 1914 could have told them. Mr. Thomas writes of early 1937:

  The volunteers had discovered in battle that “a War of ideas” is much the same as any other conflict. In Spain, or elsewhere, there was confusion of orders, jamming of rifles at the critical moment, uncertainty about the whereabouts of the enemy and of headquarters, desire for cigarettes (or sweet-tasting, things), fatigue, occasional hysteria. . . . From the start, the wilder volunteers had got into trouble with the authorities, if only for drunkenness. But now trouble was incessant. Those who wished to return home were not permitted to do so when they wished. Some complained that they had volunteered on the assumption that they could go home in three months time. Here the principles of a volunteer army conflicted with military needs. (P. 390.)

Some deserted and landed up in military detention camps (“re-education camps") and some were shot as deserters.

But, of course, the war was not won and lost by the volunteers, but by the intervention of foreign governments Germany, Italy and Russia. And the fighting men were to discover then, or alter the war, that governments have reasons of State and of profit that have little to do with the slogans and speeches about democracy and religion. 

The Anarcho-Syndicalists and others on the Republican side, who quarrelled bitterly with the Communists, were particularly incensed because Russian military aid had to be paid for; partly with the £63 million of Spanish gold that was early sent to Russia for safe keeping.

Mr. Thomas dismisses as unreal the charge that the Russians "cheated” the Republicans of the money, but concedes (p. 310) “that Russia drove a hard bargain for her goods. In addition to the gold, Spanish raw materials were despatched to Russia in bulk.”

Typical of the beliefs of Spanish critics of Russia was a statement published in London in 1941 by their Anarchist friends, in a pamphlet The Russian Myth:

  No arms or food were sent to Spain before the end of October—three months after Franco had rebelled. Immediate payment in gold was insisted upon by Stalin for such arms as were sent.

The writer of the pamphlet went on to contrast Stalin's insistence on cash down, with “Hitler and Mussolini, who gave Franco long-term credits—still in part unredeemed." He was quite wrong; German Capitalism might bait the hook with long-term credits, but not out of charity; only because a really big fish was to be caught, Spanish mineral wealth. It was German aid that was finally decisive in the autumn of 1938, but the price exacted for the arms “was German participation in all the important iron ore projects in Spain. In return for this rich prize Germany committed enough war material to Spain to tip the balance finally towards the Nationalists” (p. 612).

Mr. Thomas notes that in August, 1936, after German military help had already reached the Republican Government’s enemies in Spain, the Government was trying to buy war planes in Germany (p. 235). There is no evidence to show that Germany considered supplying the planes. If they had been in doubt they would have been duly influenced by the fact that the mineral wealth they were after in Spain was in Franco-controlled provinces.

Apart from foreign intervention with war material, troops, planes and pilots, and naval action, Mr. Thomas contrasts Franco's success in getting a high degree of unity among his supporters with the way the Republican Government was "terribly hampered by the disputes between the parties who supported it" (p. 611). He goes on:

  One excuse might be that all the parties felt so strongly about their own policies that defeat itself seemed preferable to a surrender of the purity of their individual views. It would perhaps be more truthful to say that no one was able to forge a real unity out of the Republican warring tribes as Franco and Serrano Suner were able to do among the Nationalists. (P.611.)

Failing to get aid from the West the Spanish Government had to rely more and more on Russia and the Communists —which only increased the division in its own ranks.

In April, 1939, the National Committee representing the Spanish Confederation of Labour (Anarcho-Syndicalist), the Anarchists and some other bodies published a statement, Three Years of Struggle in Spain, giving their version of events and the reason for failure. The virulence of their charges against Russia and the Russian-directed Spanish Communists shows that Mr. Thomas has understated the impossibility of Republican Unity. The National Committee bluntly declared, on the strength of their experiences in the just-ended civil war:

  Neither in war nor revolution has anti-fascist Spain had a worse enemy than Stalinism. . . . What unity did the Communist Party expect or attempt to establish? None whatever—Agents of the U.S.S.R. murdered thousands of non-Stalinist Comrades who had come to Spain and joined the International Brigades. . . .

They accused the Communists of almost every crime that they had charged against Franco, plus desertion and cowardice. They still half-believed that, but for the Communists, they would have won against Franco and his allies.

Along with evidence on which the reader can base an opinion, Mr. Thomas sums up his own by saying that most of the governments were using the opportunity of the Spanish conflict to test out weapons and study tactics for future use in larger wars. This included Republican France, and it was Léon Blum who at his trial in 1942 spoke of the Spanish war as a “test for French aviation material” (p. 615). Of course, Germany, Russia and Italy were exploiting the same opportunity, though it is one of the ironies of the situation that most of the observers appear to have drawn the wrong lessons or failed to profit by the right ones. The exceptions were the Italians and Yugoslavs who learned a lot about the kind of war the Partisans were to carry on later in both countries.

Other than that, the intervening and non-intervening governments were thinking about alignments and manoeuvring for position for the threatening world war. Each government, however, seems to have been hesitant about pushing intervention so far as to provoke that war immediately.

When the Spanish democrats complained about the governments of Britain, France, Russia and U.S.A. not being prepared to take all measures to save Republican Spain “for the sake of democracy," they were forgetting that all Capitalist groups (Russia included) are motivated by the same kind of economic and strategic interests: deciding policy on the basis of ideologies is not to be expected of any of them. If any Republicans still held this illusion in the Spring of 1939 when the Republican armies collapsed they had only to wait six months to see Germans and Russians who had been warring in Spain for three years, hobnobbing together to celebrate the Stalin-Hitler pact of friendship.

But though all the other Powers were sooner or later caught up in World War II, Franco reversed the roles—he was willing to give aid to Germany, at a price, but he was not drawn into the war as a combatant Power. This did not save the Spanish Blue Division from sharing the horrors of the war in Russia, fighting alongside the German armies. On the Republican side, Mr. Thomas relates that Russian officers who fought in Spain were among those liquidated by Stalin in the purges (p. 621), and “nearly all veterans of the Spanish Civil War in Eastern European countries were arrested and many were shot.” Later on, after the death of Stalin in 1953, they were ” rehabilitated.”

In the Epilogue in which Mr. Thomas briefly notes the subsequent fate of those who came to prominence in Spain, he tells of the Republican general El Campesino who as an exile was welcomed to Russia, but fell foul of the authorities. He escaped and in appalling difficulties made his way to Persia; only to be handed back by the British. He escaped again and is still hoping to unseat Franco. In El Campesino's own memoirs he says that what queered him with the Russian authorities was that, on being asked at a military academy which was the world's most effective fighting machine, he named the German army!

Mr. Thomas's material shows how heavily the scales were weighted against the Republicans in the international field. He expresses the opinion that “the financiers of Europe and America not only expected the Nationalists to win but desired them to” (p. 273). A vital help for Franco was that of the Texas Oil Co. was at once willing to supply oil on long-term credit, without guarantee.

Nevertheless, Mr. Thomas’s implied criticisms of the American and British Governments seem designed to invite speculation as to what might have happened if, say, American Capitalism had had big and immediate interests endangered by a Republican defeat, or if those British Conservatives who supported the Republicans had been able to persuade the Government that long-term British Capitalist interests were involved and that they should support the Republicans and risk major war with Germany and Italy. In which event the world war may have come a little sooner.

Those who, for whatever reasons, hold the view that the workers should support war can say that in 1936 that risk was worth taking. But those who reject it had and have another aspect of the Spanish conflict to consider.

It is not merely being wise after the event to say that the Republicans’ position was impossible and that civil war could not solve their problems. Many observers saw this at the time. The Popular Front which, by a bare majority of votes, won the 1936 election, was composed of such divergent elements that the aim of some of them, a sort of Labour-Liberal Parliamentary democracy, was at that time as much out of the question as the establishment of Socialism. There were the Communists, aiming to establish dictatorship on the Russian model; the Basque and Catalonian separatists inspired by hatred of central government; and the very large body of Anarcho-Syndicalists who repudiated politics and parliamentary methods, which they called "empty phrasemongering,” and who believed in direct action, violence, and armed revolt, as much against a Republican Government as any other. Their support for the Popular Front and the Popular Front Government was a denial of all their principles, regretted almost as soon as it was given.

If we concede that by some different balance of international Capitalist interests the Popular Front could have emerged victorious at the end of the civil war, what could they have done with victory that would have borne any resemblance to the democratic Spain they, or some of them, had hoped for?

Edgar Hardcastle

Rationed freedom (2006)

Pamphlet Review from the January 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Economics of Freedom: An anarcho-syndicalist alternative to capitalism. Solidarity Federation. 2003. £2.50.

This 40-page pamphlet presents an alternative, variously described as an “anarchist economy” and “libertarian communism”, to capitalism.

We wouldn’t disagree with the general description of the alternative offered:

  “. . . a society without money. People work as a social duty; wages are unnecessary – ‘from each according to their ability’; and cash is no longer needed to acquire goods – ‘to each according to need.’”
  “ . . . a system without the market and where everyone has equal rights to have their needs met . . .”
  “ . . . a society where all have equal control over decision-making and equal access to goods and services.”
 “All work is voluntary, and goods and services equally accessible. Money, wages and prices do not exist.”

But what is surprising is the alternative to having to use money to acquire consumer goods described in the section “planning basics”, which speaks of “voluntary ‘rations’, decided democratically”:

  “Some sophistication is needed to run this ‘rationing’ system. There is no point in allocating everyone four eggs a week. Some people do not eat eggs; others would prefer six but no cheese, and so on. In the case of food, it might be a ration of calories and nutritional intake, taking into account factors like age, height, special dietary and other needs. People would be entitled to any common foodstuff that met these needs, rather than being allocated quantities of specific foodstuffs.”

We really are talking here about a system of rationing (without the inverted commas) in which people would be allocated (equal for people in equal circumstances) certain amounts of things. The proposed alternative to money turns out to be a computerised card to be presented to draw your entitlement from the common store:

  “Allocation of goods can be computerised to record every product or service a person takes or uses with the information also being stored on cards to be presented when someone wants a product or service. The purpose is to prevent very excessive consumption. For example, it allows staff in common stores to query why someone might be requesting a new suite six months after getting the previous one.”

This is surprising as the pamphlet is supposed to be describing an “anarchist economy” whereas the scheme proposed, involving as it would keeping computerised records of everything individuals consumed, can only with great difficulty be described as “libertarian”. Not even capitalism does that! And, what about the shoplifters?

Socialist society will certainly, for planning how much to produce, need a rough figure for what people are likely to consume over a given period, but this only needs to be measured globally for any district – as, for instance, by a computerised system of stock control or by sample polling – not at the level of each and every individual.

But why could not people have free access to consumer goods and services according to what they themselves decide their needs are? There are only two circumstances that would make this unworkable: (a) if it wasn’t technically possible to produce enough to satisfy the needs of everyone, and (b) if it was thought that even a significant minority would consistently take more than they could use.

All the evidence suggests that, once the artificial scarcity imposed by the need to make a profit has been removed, and once all the resources currently wasted on selling activities (and on armaments and armed forces) have been redirected to useful production, then enough could be produced to supply everyone’s needs. And experience of where even today people have free access to something – e.g. buses, telephones, drinking water, in some places – they only use these things when they need to. In any event, what would be the point of taking more than you needed when you could be certain that the stores would be stocked with what you wanted? That would just clutter up where you lived.

Certainly, particularly in the very early days of socialism and perhaps later after some unexpected natural disaster, there could be shortages of some things that might necessitate recourse to some system of rationing for those things. But this would only be exceptional and temporary, the normal situation being free access to goods and services according to self-determined needs.

What this pamphlet proposes is an intrinsic system of long-term rationing, even if the rations are to be decided democratically. That would be a possible alternative to money and, if it worked, fairer than money, but it’s not necessarily what socialists advocate could – or should – happen in “a society without money”.

Adam Buick

Socialism and Anti-Parliamentarism (1928)

From the January 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

REPORT OF LECTURE.

Held at Friars Hall, Blackfriars, 20/11/27.

Comrade Fitzgerald commenced his lecture by pointing out the erroneous definitions of Socialism which were being spread about by Capitalist agents in order to breed confusion in the minds of the Working Class. For that reason, he went on to say, it was especially necessary to define Socialism. Two false definitions were (1) that Socialism meant a system of sharing-out; (2) that Socialism was a system of rationing. The word “Socialism" was taken from the word “Society.” The Economic League denied there was any system in society; they claimed that there had always been one method of “getting things done" and that was the present one, which had always existed. They allowed only for changes in the details of the management of society. The Socialist, however, took the evidence in front of him and held that changes in the system had taken place. When the Socialist laid down that he was out for Socialism, he wanted a system of society where those things necessary for the maintenance of life itself would be owned by society as a whole. Socialism meant the social ownership of the things necessary to maintain life—land, railways, machinery, plant, etc. The products would be individually owned and consumed. That definition should be kept clearly in mind. The idea that we would all use the same toothbrush was sheer nonsense. Another bogey put forward was that Socialism would restrict individuality. Individuality was already restricted when it entered Society.

In capitalist society we had the contradiction of over-production with the majority of the people lacking the necessities of life. To-day the present system was known as capitalism, and the troublesome task with which it was faced was the finding of markets for its products. This was due to the fact that the things made were produced for SALE and not to satisfy the needs of society. The things necessary to maintain life were privately owned by a small section in society, a section which took no part in production. The working class changed the raw material into the finished articles. The working class received money—a medium of exchange—for their services, but they could only purchase a small portion of the things produced with that money. The rest of the products which the working class could not buy because their purchasing power was so limited, had to be exported into other countries after the capitalist class had consumed as much as it could. Even the capitalist consumption was limited and so the capitalists were still faced with the problem of over-production. The basic factor of wars was the struggle of the capitalists to find markets and routes for their products. There was no economic solution and the capitalists could only meet the difficulty for the time being by maintaining, as they are doing to-day, but in still greater proportions, those members of the working class who were unemployed. It was a fault in the working of the system. The only solution was to harmonise production and ownership by society taking control of the means of production and the instruments for the converting of the raw material into the articles we require, and owning socially, product socially—i.e., for the needs of Society and not for the profits of a class, The question was how was this to be done—there was only one manner of doing it and that was by the members of society desiring it should be so—it was not going to happen behind one's back as some people fondly imagined. The human factor was necessary to change the present conditions. The only class interested in that change was the working class—it was to their interest that the capitalist system should be wiped out. How', then, to bring about Socialism? In the ultimate—it was power. The workers had, therefore, to examine the situation and decide how they could get that necessary power into their hands. Political power was the essential for bringing about the change. There was a great deal of confusion about the meaning of political power, and a great deal of superstition. Some thought the vote was merely a bauble to amuse the working class. Others that since politics were corrupted, the workers should not dabble in them, but should devote themselves to the pure, dean, atmosphere of economic action. That action did not look so pure now—with its Black Friday of the Triple Alliance and its blacker Wednesday of the so-called General Strike. These notions, whether springing from personal experience or manufactured by people whose interest it was to spread confusion, were due to a misunderstanding of what politics meant. The working class had not grasped the historical side of the matter. They join a political party and they see underhand trickery going on that they sicken of the whole business because they do not understand politics. The ordinary dictionary told you that the word “Politics” was the name given to the “Science of the State”—that was not sufficient. Politics had their basis in the organisation of society itself and in the early days when arrangements had to be made for common purposes, those restrictions, arrangements, etc., were the politics of that time.

The Development of Politics.—In the regulations of the tribal communities we have the first stages of the development of the political machine. The technical term for a meeting of the tribes was “the Phratry.” Tribes would be organised according to their conditions of obtaining a living. Some would live by plunder and others by agriculture. Beyond the Tweed, we find the terms “Highlander” and "Lowlander” still surviving. They had their origin in the two methods of organisation, i.e.. The Highlanders for plunder, and the Lowlanders for agriculture. We have remnants of this type of tribal organisation in India on the North-West Frontier.

In this country we can go back to the days of the Anglo-Saxon invasion when the Anglo-Saxon tribes divided the land between them, probably, into the different “shires” that exist to this day. A unit of division was very often one hundred soldiers, one of these divisions in use to-day is “The Chiltern Hundreds." It was interesting to remark that the only way for an M.P. to resign from Parliament to-day was by applying for the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds which are non-existent, otherwise he was technically unable to resign.

The first form of National Council was the Witenagemote composed of representatives of the different shires. In the 13th Century Simon de Montfort summonsed together the first "Parliament" for the consideration of ways and means of carrying on wars. It was then too that the towns were first represented. In King John’s time we found the Barons holding a council and refusing to suffer the despotic John to tax as he pleased, and at Runnymede the Magna Charter was signed, which provided among other things that no man should be sent abroad without his consent.

The Position with Regard to Kings.— Foreign writers were apt to point to the instance of the deposition and beheading of Charles the First as unique in English History, but this king had a predecessor in King Richard II, who was deposed during the year 1399, and superseded by Henry IV, who was crowned by a “general election” of the barons. So the Right of Kings was not only challenged, but brought to its logical conclusion. The 16th century marked intense development in politics. The merchant class was rising; the New World had been discovered; enormous markets were opened for produce and commerce and enormous areas were found for plunder. Trouble began to brew over the demands of King Charles I that finally led to a rupture between the King and Parliament. It is interesting to note here that Charles had formed stores of ammunition near the Border in preparation for a war with Scotland. When the clash between the King and Parliament came, the Parliament sent its officials to seize those stores, which was promptly done. Colonel Hutchinson in his “Memoirs," has reported an amusing incident where the authority of Parliament set the authority of the King at naught, and the official sent to take the supplies for the King was denied by the officer in charge who wanted Parliament’s authority first. The King was beheaded.

The rigid rule of the Puritans led to a temporary reaction, and then the Restoration of Charles II. But the Stuarts had learnt little and James II tried to restore the “Divine Right of Kings." This led to the Rebellion of 1688, and the placing of William of Orange—as William III—on the Throne. But William was only made King on condition that he accepted the Constitution that kept the real power in the hands of Parliament, and he signed a declaration to that effect. This illustrated the power of Parliament and the importance of political power.

In 1832 the Reform Bill was passed, which completed the control of power by the capitalist class. Political machinery, is, therefore, the method of managing the affairs of any given society. It is not a bauble—it is a factor grown out of the development of society itself.

To-day, the workers perform all the useful functions in society. Occasionally a capitalist may amuse himself by going into the office to dabble in business, but as a class, the capitalists preferred to spend their time at the gambling tables of Monte Carlo or yachting in the Mediterranean, etc. Some people said that it was the capitalist class who provided the brains. What, then, happened when a capitalist died? Surely in such a case the business must die with him —but what did we find?—more often than not the business went on better than during his life, at all events it did not immediately die. The truth was that brains were bought, and the brains were supplied by the working class. Since the capitalist performed no useful function, the logical deduction was that those who did all the work should enjoy the results. Why didn’t they? It was not a question of numbers—the workers were in the majority. Why didn’t they take control of the means of production for themselves? Simply because if they had attempted to do so they would have had to meet the forces of the Nation—the army, the aircraft, etc. The army, however, is composed of working men, and even the officers, bar the fashionable regiments like the Guards, are working men—they sell their "professional services” for their livelihood. How, then, did the capitalist control the Army? It was a question of supplies. First, the law sanctioning the Army, etc., is passed by Parliament. Then the supplies necessary to maintain and increase these Forces are voted in the Annual Budget. Lastly, the instructions and general orders are sanctioned by Parliament before they can be put into operation, The control of the Fighting Forces is therefore in the hands of those controlling the political machinery.

Another point, not so well known, is that a Standing Army—for more than a year—is illegal in this country. How then does this Army continue in existence ? By the following method. Every year a Bill called the Renewal of Expiring Acts Bill is passed in the House of Commons. One of the items in that Bill is the renewal of the Army. So that even to continue the Army the control of Parliament is necessary. Since 1867, when the Ten Pound Franchise Bill was passed, the workers have had the majority of votes. The workers, therefore, have ample means to get control of that machine politically. The anarchist says Parliament is no good.

The Anarchists.—There are two sets of Anarchist Groups, one believes that an individual should be entirely free and that action should be confined to economic lines —i.e.. striking, etc. That a General Strike would wipe out capitalism. They ignore the fact that the first people to suffer are the working class, who have the smallest supplies. A General Strike, therefore, means General Starvation.

Moreover they are quite unable to show how unarmed workers could face the fighting forces, particularly with the latter’s powerful modern weapons of destruction.

The other set believes that syndicates should be organised by the workers in the industries for the purpose of taking over these industries and that each section should be confined to its own trade, i.e., the bakers—the bakery, the miners—the mines, etc. This was known as Syndicalism. It was absurd to isolate the workers in that manner—to put the miners in charge of the mines, the sewermen in charge of the sewers, and the lunatics, presumably, in charge of the asylums. (Laughter.) Production was social, the miner depended on the baker for his bread, and the baker depended on the miner for his coal, etc.

About 1905 a scheme was formulated in Chicago that had for its method the “taking and holding" of the means of production without a political party. The body then formed was called the Industrial Workers of the World. When asked how they could hold the means of production the answer usually given was “by locking out the capitalist.” As the capitalist is hardly ever in the factory this did not seem a very hopeful procedure. When asked what power the workers could bring against the armed forces they had no answer, though later on they developed the notion of physical force— a piece of sheer lunacy while the capitalist control political power. The Anti-Parliamentarists, such as Guy Aldred, who ranted about the uselessness of the political machine, were unable to find a substitute. The Socialist Society, in its first stages, may have to maintain a standing army, and it will be the workers then who will determine that question. Having this control, through the political machine, the workers will be able to obtain and distribute what they require.

New Publications (1942)

Book Reviews from the December 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Parliament, Traitors and Beer

"Vote—What For" (Freedom Press, 2d.), by E. Malatesta, is an adaptation from a work by that author. It is the familiar Anarchist attack on parliamentary methods and government presented in the form of a discussion between two workers, George and Jack, over a glass of beer. George, supporter of parliamentary methods and of the Labour Party, puts up a defence which is demolished by Jack, the Anarchist. The demolition' is rapid. Perhaps it is because the leaflet is only fifteen pages. The vote, says Jack, is a fraud: those elected further their own interests except at election times, when they make fulsome promises to the gullible workers. George, unshaken, replies that we should elect workers, and then we should not be fooled. In reply to this the Anarchist makes two points: one, a majority in Parliament would be a ‘"paradise,” but only for the "elected”: and two—but let Jack speak for himself: "The rich are always in power. Just imagine a poor worker, perhaps with an ill wife and four kids, and you [that is, hard-hearted George] tell him to risk his job and get thrown out of' his house to starve; just to give his vote to a candidate his master doesn't like." From which one gathers that Anarchist Jack's indignation is righteously aroused at the suggestion that the worker should exercise his vote because such action would bring in the bailiffs and impose starvation on an ill wife and four hungry kids and all. Does E. Malatesta (or his adaptor) mean this? It is difficult to say. Anarchist writings do not always mean what they seem to say. However, for tuppence, Freedom Press will enable the reader to judge for himself.

This leaflet, in typical Anarchist fashion, confuses the issue on the question of parliamentary methods. It would have the ingenuous believe that the effort to achieve Socialism through Parliament has failed. Ramsay MacDonald is instanced as a Socialist who was won over by the rich. "As soon as you send anyone to office they turn traitor," the Anarchist says. The answer to such childish nonsense is: (1) Ramsay MacDonald was not a Socialist, nor was the Labour Party which he led; (2) The Labour Governments of 1924 and 1929-31 were not returned on Socialist programmes by the votes of Socialist supporters; (3) The two Labour Governments did not fail to introduce Socialism because of the illusory character of the vote, but because they were elected on reformist programmes to carry on the administration of capitalism. They learned bitterly that they could not reform out of existence working class problems, and that capitalism can only function in the interests of the capitalists.

That the Anarchists persist in accepting the Labour Party as a Socialist party might be regarded as a measure of what they understand Socialism to stand for. (This leaflet describes the I.L.P. as revolutionary whilst another Anarchist pamphlet issued by Freedom Press, "New Life to the Land," by George Woodcock, describes the I.L.P. as semi-revolutionary.) To accept the Labour Party as Socialist and to imply it stands for Socialism exposes the Anarchist claim to stand for a classless society and the abolition of the wages system as a mere form of words. A leaflet which sacrifices logic to propaganda argument. Crude, flat—but perhaps the latter was due to the beer with which George and Jack started the argument.

The Take (or Sit) and Hold Theory

"Trade Unionism or Syndicalism?" by Tom Brown (Freedom Press, 3d.).  The author of this pamphlet makes out a case for the Syndicalist practice to replace existing trade union organisation and for the Syndicalist method of taking over the means of production from the capitalists. He discusses what he thinks is the weak spot in trade union organisation, the organising of workers on the basis of their craft, i.e., "according to the tools they use.” The result is that the workers in any one industry find themselves organised in several trade unions (engineering workers are organised in fifty unions). In his trade union branch, usually near where he lives and away from his work, the trade unionist finds his fellow branch members connected with any industry but that in which he himself works. The result is lack of interest. The author advocates workers organised on the basis of one union for each industry. Mr. Brown's criticisms show all the obvious advantages likely to be gained from organisation by industry. That is, however, not the whole story, as the advocates of the rival conception will maintain, and experience in industries where the industrial idea has been more or less fully applied does not show any startling improvement. Moreover—and this should be remembered by both schools—the border lines of an industry are not always clear and fixed. Hence, for example, the conflicting claims of those who would argue that the railways are a self-contained industry and those who retort that they are only part of the transport industry.

Socialists are, however, more concerned with the further aspect. Mr. Brown does not advocate the one union one industry form of industrial organisation for the workers as an end in itself but as a means also for presenting the class struggle along Syndicalist lines, as a means for wresting ownership and control of the factories from the capitalists. The author proposes the " Social General Strike," or the "General Lock-out of the Employing Class" as he would prefer to describe it, and the management and administration of factories and industries along Syndicalist lines by the workers, such industries to be organised on a federal basis. On page 10 he says: "Against this action we hear raised the Social Democratic wail, “If you do that the bosses will shoot and baton you!' We reply, if you don't, they will shoot and baton (and starve) you, but with much greater success, as the history of passive starvation strikes shows. But in order to beat the workers, they must first start knocking about their own property, as they discovered in the 1937 automobile stay-in-strike in the U.S.A. If Mr. Brown is saying that the capitalists would acquiesce in parting with the ownership of the factories rather than see them knocked about, the present war demonstrates the contrary. They accept the facts of quite a lot of " knocking about" even where the certain loss of ownership is not involved. In any case, the sit-down strikes in America, and those in France which he also quotes, were not strikes which had for their purpose the taking over of the factories concerned on Syndicalist lines. Another example is given, with approval, of French shop girls who engaged in a sit-down strike and locked out the customers. Surely they acted wrongly. Ought they not have served the customers and informed the employers that the proceeds were for the benefit of the workers? Commenting on the example of the French shop girls Mr. Brown almost gushes: "And the bloodshed, the vast sea of gore, predicted by the Socialist. NONE!" Might a Socialist humbly suggest that the capitalist state would apply such methods as were dictated by the extent of the menace.

Well written, in a superficially plausible style, the hollowness of the Syndicalist case as stated in this pamphlet is nevertheless almost self-apparent.

Russia To-day

"Soviet Russia in Maps" (edited by George Goodal, M.A., price 2/6, and published by George Phillip & Sons, Ltd.), is a useful addition to an existing library of books on Russia. It consists of thirty-two pages of maps with notes and commentaries illustrating main changes in Russian economics, social and political changes, over seven centuries; it includes figures and comparisons of industrial developments to date.

Harry Waite

Why Can't We All Get Together (1947)

From the August 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since workers' political organisations were first formed the idea of uniting them has occupied the minds of many members. Frequent attempts have been made among political bodies in this country, but always the S.P.G.B. has stood aside on the ground that effective unity can only be on the basis of agreement on fundamental principles, that is to say agreement about the aim and about the methods. Where there is such agreement, as between the S.P.G.B. and the parties with the same aims and methods, in U.S.A., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, close and harmonious co-operation presents no difficulty. It is obvious, easy and useful.

The following item about the Easter Conference of the I.L.P. was published in the Manchester Evening News (2/4/47):—

I.L.P. CONSIDERS ANARCHIST LINK 

  “When the I.L.P. meets at Ayr at Easter it will debate a proposal for close links with Common Wealth, the Socialist party of Great Britain, and the Anarchist Federation.
  “A resolution from Ipswich urges that the I.L.P. should conduct a joint campaign with these bodies on specific issues stressing workers’ ownership and control of industries and freedom of colonial peoples.”

It appears from published reports of the Conference proceedings that the decision actually made was to form some sort of joint committee between the I.L.P. and Common Wealth. Another decision was that I.L.P. members are barred from being members of the Labour Party though this is to be reconsidered.

The organisations that plead for unity, the I.L.P. and the Communists, for example, either hold that agreement is unnecessary or pretend that it exists where it does not. Sometimes the proposal is that there should be associated action on a particular issue between parties that claim to be fundamentally antagonistic.

The reasons for the distinctive attitude of the S.P.G.B. can be found in our declaration of principles. The three clauses of special relevance are the object, the clause affirming that there is an antagonism of interests between the working class and the Capitalist class, and the clause that lays down the need for the working class to organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government.

Our object is Socialism, defined as a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community. Our definition is not a mere insistence on a formula. We work for Socialism and oppose Capitalism—including nationalisation or State Capitalism—because only Socialism will solve the problem facing the working class. The Labour Party miscalls State Capitalism "Socialism,” as also do the Communists. The I.L.P. used to do so although at the moment it places more emphasis on the equally false proposition that State Capitalism is a useful stepping stone on the way to Socialism. When therefore the unity seeker asks why cannot the S.P.G.B. get together with others who want "Socialism” he is letting the misuse of a word deceive him. We do not want State Capitalism and therefore have no interest in associating with those who do. The fact that they call it “Socialism” only makes their activities more dangerous to the workers.

Another proposition is that while recognising differences of aim why cannot Socialists consent to be fellow-travellers with others who are “on the same road but are not going so far.” This has often been put to us by Labour Party supporters, I.L.P.ers, and, in the old days, by Liberals. One objection is that it is an essential part of Socialist propaganda to convince the workers that the advocates of “something less than Socialism” are and must be advocates of Capitalism. It is our job to demonstrate that their activities are against the interests of the workers; that they are enemies of Socialism and of the working class. How could we associate with them and at the same time expect the workers to believe us when we say that support of such organisations is useless and dangerous? Years ago when a Liberal put this proposal in debate with the S.P.G.B., our speaker, the late A. Anderson, pointed out in reply that the only gainers would be the Liberals. What they called travelling together would mean in effect only that we would be carrying the Liberals’ luggage for them.

The resolution quoted at the beginning of this article seeks a joint campaign with Common Wealth, the I.L P. and the Anarchists on specific issues stressing workers' ownership and control of industries and freedom of colonial people. The objection of the S.P.C.B. to any such joint campaign should be obvious. We do not want “workers’ ownership," which means syndicalism, but ownership by the whole community. We are utterly opposed to the support of State Capitalism given by Common Wealth. We regard the propaganda and activities of the Anarchists as useless and dangerous to the working class. Finally we have to point out to colonial workers that "freedom/' i.e., national independence, is not the solution of their problem. We want all countries to be free from Capitalism and are not in favour of encouraging the illusions fostered for interested reasons by the propertied class in colonial countries.

Point is given to our case against the Anarchists by their views and actions in the country where they are strongest, Spain. In 1936 they abandoned their claim to be opposed to political parties by joining in the movement to elect a Popular Front Government The following recent report shows a new twist:

"Madrid, March 26th.
   “The Spanish anarchist movement announced to-night that after a meeting of delegates from all parts of Spain it had decided to collaborate fully with the Monarchists for the overthrow of the Franco regime and for holding a plebiscite to decide whether Spain should be a republic or a monarchy.” — Reuter. — Manchester Guardian, March 29th, 1947).

It would seem that association with Anarchists for specific objects may lead the participants into curious company.

On the international field the S.P.G.B. has always taken the same consistent view. Having in 1904 sent two delegates to the International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam, and found that the organisation was largely made up of bodies interested in reforms but not in Socialism, the S.P.G.B. laid down as a first requirement: "That only Socialist organisations recognising the class war in theory and practice should be represented at the International Socialist Congress.” 

As this was naturally unacceptable to the reforms bodies in the International the S.P.G.B. did not see any use in seeking admission. The attempt to associate at home with bodies having conflicting aims and methods would only cause confusion and wasted effort. Equally the passing of pious resolutions at international conferences merely hides the nationalist outlook of the affiliated parties as two world wars have demonstrated. Effective unity for Socialism can only be on the basis of real agreement about the aim and the methods. Our Declaration of Principles provides such a basis and it is for the critics to show what other basis there can be for the Socialist movement.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Floods — Another Solution (1953)

From the May 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is claimed by Anarchists and Anarcho-Syndicalists that they are revolutionaries not reformists; that they are opposed to the various politicians' schemes for patching up the present social system. A recent editorial of The Syndicalist (February, 1953), however, shows that this is not so.

Under the title “A Floodworkers’ Scheme,” The Syndicalist deals with the condition of the sea walls and dykes around the British Coast. “It is a disgrace,” says the writer, "that the people of Canvey Island should have been relying for their safety on dykes built by Dutchmen two hundred years ago, and that elsewhere clay walls built in the time of Henry VIII were relied upon to keep back the relentless sea." After castigating the authorities for not having tackled the task of strengthening the sea defences before, and merely waiting for disaster and then bringing in the Army, The Syndicalist puts forward its own “revolutionary” solution. “What is needed is a national scheme for flood and tempest.” And, continues our Anarchist writer :—

   "The country can afford to keep a few old men as watchmen for such a job . . .  and the possibility of lookout posts, with sirens, on a job modelled on that of the lighthouse-keeper is something that will at the very least help out a few pensioners while remaining a surety for warning if not for safety.
   "A flood labour scheme could continue throughout the year, but particularly employing unskilled labour in slacker periods of the year. That there is vast pool of foreign labour which would be only too anxious to come over and participate in such a scheme is undisputable. But a national scheme is required, and proper rates should be paid, for it is impossible to conceive that Army and volunteer help such as at present exists in the flood areas can continue indefinitely."

Need we comment on this Anarcho-Syndicalist "solution?”

Peter E. Newell

Non-Revolutionary Unionism (1971)

Book Review from the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revolutionary Syndicalism in France, by F. F. Ridley. Cambridge University Press. £4.20.

This is a study of the theory and practice of the French equivalent of the TUC, the Confédération Génerale du Travail, in its syndicalist period from 1900 to 1914.

The basic unit of worker organisation in France at this time was the syndicat, or local union of workers in the same trade. Hence “syndicalism”, which on its own is really just the French word for trade unionism. The CGT leaders described their policy as “revolutionary” syndicalism. They were anarchists and wanted the unions to stage a general strike to overthrow capitalism and set up a moneyless, wageless, Stateless society where the unions would control production.

The bulk OF the CGT members, however, were just militant trade unionists, interested mainly in fighting the day-to-day struggle to improve wages and conditions within capitalism. Most of the CGT’S policies for this struggle—political neutrality so as not to divide workers who need unity to defend their economic interests; recognition of the class struggle between the workers and the capitalists and their government; strike action; the only real gains are those the workers get by their own action—were just good trade unionism. Others such as sabotage and intimidation were, as we shall see, a sign of the movement’s weakness.

The anarcho-syndicalist leaders of the CGT were in the same sort of position on the industrial front as the Social Democrats were on the political front: workers supported them not because they wanted to overthrow capitalism, but because they felt that their policies would bring some improvements within capitalism. Like Socialism for the Social Democratic parties, the General Strike became for the CGT a more and more ultimate aim which had little reference to its day-to-day activity, except perhaps as an inspiration. Ridley brings out this point well.

The CGT was no more an anarchist organisation than the Social Democratic parties were socialist. Its pretensions too were exposed at the outbreak of the first World War, though it seems to have been a reasonably good trade union body for its time.

Ridley brings out a number of other valid points. Wage and salary earners were a minority both of the population and of the electorate in the France of this period. Of the 12 million wage and salary earners, only about 836,000, or less than 7 per cent, were organised and less than half of these were in the CGT. The CGT, in other words, only represented about 2 to 3 per cent of the working class. As Ridley says,

  in a sense, violence is the only path open to the weak. There is a close relationship between weak, unorganised labour movements and the outbreak of revolutionary or anarchist activity in Russia, Spain and Italy, as well as in France.

French industry too was backward. The syndicalist slogan “The Workshops to the Workers” was taken literally to mean that the small-scale workshops where many French workers were employed would be run by the syndicats, or local unions. It is significant that the nation-wide unions representing workers employed in large-scale industry—mines, textiles, railways, post office—though in the CGT were opponents of its anarchist leaders.

The General Strike was originally put forward as an alternative to the ballot box as a peaceful way to end capitalism. But, as the Socialist Party of Great Britain pointed out at the time, experience of much lesser strikes showed that any such move would be met by the violence of the State. And. why if a majority can be persuaded to strike for Socialism don’t they at least try the easier way—the ballot box—first?

The cult of action, or action-for-action’s sake, some syndicalist theoreticians espoused was shared also by extreme nationalists and monarchists which, as Ridley suggests, is why after the first World War so many of them found it easy to go over to fascism. Mussolini himself, though never an anarcho-syndicalist as such, was a leading figure on the direct-actionist wing of the Italian Socialist Party before the war. Ridley also says that it is wrong to see Sorel’s Reflections on Violence as a statement of syndicalist principles since Sorel was not a syndicalist leader or militant; he was only someone who happened to sympathise with some aspects of syndicalism at the time he wrote his book.

Unthinking activism and contempt for democratic discussion and peaceful persuasion—break-up of meetings, lectures and sports matches, confrontations with the police, physical attacks and threats against people with different views—is again being indulged in by the assorted followers of Mao, Guevara and Trotsky without their realising its dangers. This is vehemently opposed by the Socialist Party.

Professor Ridley’s book is a good analysis of syndicalism, though some may find the philosophical discussion in the third part a little abstruse.

Adam Buick

The Heroic Tragedy: Civil War and Social Revolution in Spain (2016)

From the September 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Back the revolutionary general strike the very instant anyone [i.e. the military] revolts. We, the people of Catalonia, let us be on a war footing and ready to act. Be valiant. Arm yourselves and do battle. Long Live the CNT! Long Live Libertarian Communism! Launch the revolutionary general strike against fascism.' - CNT statement of 19 July 1936

Eighty years ago this summer, Spain saw an attempted military coup being temporarily defeated by ordinary people in many parts of the country. This was the beginning of what was to be a three year long civil war, resulting in half a million deaths, and followed by the four decade dictatorship of General Franco. This article will aim to describe some of the key features of the conflict, paying close attention to the ‘social revolution’ in Catalonia and Aragon which is of most relevance to socialists.

To understand the outbreak of the civil war it is first necessary to understand some of the background to the conflict. Spain in the early twentieth century was a predominately agrarian society; large scale industrialisation had only taken place in the north of the country and in Catalonia, around Barcelona. In the countryside an entrenched land owning class, of which the church was a significant section, had been resistant to agrarian economic reform, rural workers were locked into a state of poverty, often forced to work for long hours for little more than subsistence wages. Decades of agitation and self education had given birth to a strong and militant anarchist and syndicalist movement. Spain had become the only country where the anarchist ideas of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta and others had given rise to a social movement of significant numbers. By the time of the 1930’s the major workers unions where the CNT (National Confederation of Labour) and the UGT (General Workers’Union). Despite ideological differences and occasional conflict there was often cooperation between the two organisations. The CNT was an anarcho-syndicalist organisation that shunned parliamentary elections and advocated industrial direct action as a means of overcoming capitalism. From the late twenties onwards, the FAI (Anarchist Federation of Iberia) had gained influence within the CNT. The FAI pushed for a programme of insurrectional ‘revolutionary gymnastics’with the intent of immediately bringing about anarchism through violent confrontation with the state. These policies clashed with those of the more orthodox syndicalists within the CNT who saw the social revolution as only being possible after a longer period of working class self-education and self-organisation. The UGT was affiliated to the labourist social-democratic PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers Party) and pursued a line that was more in favour of winning legal concessions from the government.

The military declaration of 1936, which bought the beginning of the civil war, was not the first time that Spain had faced dictatorship. The dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera came about in 1923 when the government resigned in the face of a similar pronunciamiento from the Army. Following a bloodless coup, Primo de Rivera stayed in power until 1931, when the support of the military and the wealthy classes was lost. Subsequent elections gave victory to anti-monarchist parties, causing the King to abdicate and flee the country, thus bringing into being the Second Republic of Spain.

The coming of the Second Republic saw a sudden rise in working class activity as workers looked to it as a means to finally solve their economic and social problems. Rural and urban workers, even in areas not previously known for their radicalism, began to demand improvements to working conditions, public meetings became commonplace and the church, seen by many to be defending the privileged and the wealthy, often became a target for grievances. The increase in working class militancy, and particularly attacks on the Roman Catholic Church, enraged certain sections of the ruling class. In the election of 1933 a confederation of Catholic parties, the CEDA, operating on a quasi-fascist platform, won the largest amount of seats but not enough of a majority to form a government. Despite this, power was offered to the second largest party, the Radical Republican Party. The Radicals co-operated with the CEDA and in 1934 they ceded, giving three ministerial positions to the CEDA.

In protest against the CEDA entering the government the PSOE declared a general strike on 5th October 1934. In most parts of the country the strike was rapidly defeated as the government declared a state of martial law and the army took over the running of essential services. In Barcelona the regional government declared an independent state of Catalonia. A blood bath was avoided, when a request to arm the workers was refused, and when the military general in charge of re-establishing the authority of the Madrid central government ordered his troops to be ‘deaf, dumb and blind’ towards any provocations. The only place the strike held on for any amount of time was in the northern mining area of Asturias where, unlike in other areas, the strike had the backing of all the workers organisations. There the situation rapidly became insurrectional. An estimated 15,000 to 30,000 armed miners took part in an uprising. Civil Guard posts and public buildings were attacked and several towns being successfully occupied. Comunismo libertario was declared with revolutionary committees taking on the social responsibilities of government, the use of money was restricted and ration vouchers were distributed to families. In response the government sent General Franco and the Moroccan Army of Africa, as well as the navy and airforce, to quell the disturbance. Retribution was brutal, around 2000 miners were killed and a further 20,000 to 30,000 imprisoned. Moorish troops unleashed a wave of looting, rape and summary executions on the surrounding mining villages. The Asturian uprising showed a pattern of events that would be repeated on a larger scale two years later, as the civil war took its course.

The military rebellion

In 1936 a leftist popular front, supported for the first time by the votes of the anarcho-syndicalists, won the election. The victory was partly due to the promise to release the thousands of prisoners who were still being held following the uprisings of ‘34 and to also reverse and improve on wage reductions imposed by the previous government. Determined to put a stop to the growth of working class militancy, anti-religiosity and regional separatism that had accompanied the coming of the republic, a conspiracy of officers in the military sought to reimpose what they saw as being the true will of the nation. A coup was organised to take place in July 1936. The generals hoped that they would achieve a rapid victory. However, this was not to be. In the event, beginning on the 18 July, significant elements in the military and security forces remained loyal to the Republic. The whole of the Navy remained loyal, just over half of the Guardia Civil (Civil Guard –a rural paramilitary police force) as did over 70 percent of the Guardias de Asalto (Assault Guards –an urban paramilitary police force set up during the time of the republic).

On hearing of the military rising the government, in the beginning in denial about the seriousness of the situation, was at first unwilling to arm the workers organisations. So initially through their own initiatives, by raiding gun-shops, digging up weapons stored since the Asturias uprising or by being provided weapons by loyal Assault Guards, ordinary workers began to come out against the rising. In Madrid a crowd stormed the Montanna barracks. In Barcelona factory sirens sounded to warn of the rising and an immediate general strike came into effect. Thousands of people took to the streets, setting up barricades to hinder the incursions of the military. Where the workers movement was strong, and opposition was organised quickly, the rising was defeated. In areas which failed to offer resistance, the rising was successful and the military rebels (henceforth referred to as the ‘Nationalists’) began serving out a brutal repression of the workers organisations and anyone who was seen as being loyal to the republic. Spain was split into two zones, as noted by Raymond Carr ‘those who happened to be in a zone that was hostile to their beliefs had to conform, escape, or risk imprisonment or shooting. Loyalty was often a matter of locality.’Though, where given the choice, the working classes generally supported the Republic and the upper classes, the Nationalists.

The working class in the saddle

The effect of arming the unions meant that the workers organisations were in control. In Barcelona, the CNT was offered full control of the Generalitat (Catalonian regional government) but refused to take it, partly because they did not want to set up a ‘workers’ dictatorship’, and partly because they were not sure how to deal with the situation. Instead they took a place on the Anti-Fascist Militia Committee, which was in effect a sub-committee of the regional government. This committee was later dissolved and the CNT took a minority position within the Generalitat. While the CNT held power in the factories and workplaces, a vast swathe of governmental state power, including the administration of military affairs and the overseeing of justice, was left with the Generalitat. This would later be used as a level to prise power away from the syndicalists.

In Barcelona, Catalonia, Aragon and the surrounding areas the CNT enacted their anarcho-syndicalist ideology and set about collectivising large sections of industry, though it was in the countryside that the most far reaching attempts at realising ‘libertarian communism’ where attempted. Following the upheavals, most large landowners in republican controlled areas had fled. With the landowning class absent, rural workers began spontaneously commandeering and collectivising land. Collectivisation meant that access to equipment, resources and labour could be pooled, leading to and increase in output and productivity and an improvement in living conditions. Within the collectives attempts at achieving an equitable distribution of goods and services were conducted in a various different ways. Some, a minority, practised a system of free access where people could simply take what they needed from the communal store. Others printed their own forms of currency or ration cards. As time went on the normal state of affairs gravitated towards that of being paid a fixed ‘family wage’ where collective members where entitled to certain quantities of various household items. To say that money was abolished is to push too far, ‘money’ does not necessarily mean only state minted currency but whatever can serve as a general measure of value and means of exchange. Whilst some agricultural collectives did not pay their workers in state currency, it was still used as a means of accounting between units. Despite the collectivisations the basic economic unit was still that of separate and competing enterprises.

“Anarchists abandoned the idea of a substitute for national money. The agrarian collectives decided to abolish money, only to adopt other systems of exchange…. The difficulties created by local money and the lack of a unified currency soon became evident. Very soon the collectivists of Aragon saw the advantages of a kind of national bank”–Frank Mintz

In Catalonia and Aragon nearly 70 percent of the workforce was involved in the collectives. Across the whole of the Republican territory there were almost 800,000 involved on the land and just over one million in industry.

Industrial collectivisation was not as deep or far reaching as the efforts in the countryside. In the first days of the revolution workers simply seized abandoned factories and restarted production. Workers in a collectivised enterprise would organise themselves into committees, and the committees would be federated regionally. The basic unit of organisation was the factory committee. The requisitions where retrospectively made legal in late October 1936. This was partly in an effort for the central government to regain control of industry. Part of the legislation meant that each factory council had a designated ‘controller’ that was responsible to the government. The vast majority of industry in Catalonia was organised in this way. While the workers certainly had more control over their working conditions than in a privately or state owned enterprise, the industrial situation could best be described as kind of trade-union controlled capitalism; production was still being conducted for the purpose of exchange, both within the Republic and with the outside world.

(to be continued and concluded next month)

Darren Poynton