So I'm in the midst of reading an article "Is Revolution Back on the Agenda?" (http://libcom.org/history/revolution-back-agenda-mark-kosman) and I come across the following:
Anarchists argue that they could have done better [in post-revolution USSR]. But, when anarchist activists introduced workplace self-management during the Spanish Civil War, scarcity, military pressures and workers' indiscipline pushed these activists in the same authoritarian direction as the Bolsheviks. The anarchist Justice Minister, Garcia Oliver, initiated the setting up of 'concentration camps' and even the most principled anarchists, the Friends of Durutti, advocated 'forced labour'.[12]
I checked out the endnote for these statements and it referred me to certain sections of Michael Seidman's book Workers Against Work. I read the sections he referred to (wasn't much to read). I haven't read this book but I have read a couple old libcom threads debating it. I got the impression that the author was making a big stink over nothing worth making a stink about -- that there was pressure being put on workers to work. Well, it seems obvious to me that if we need to maintain a certain level of productivity to avoid starvation during a revolutionary war, then hell yes, we should be putting pressure on people to work, damn it, as long as this pressure is democratic and doesn't violate human rights. The alternative is starvation and counter-revolution.
But I hadn't heard anything about these prison labor camps. (Maybe I didn't read the threads closely enough.) This is a whole other story. I'll quote a passage from the book, and as you see it wasn't just counter-revolutionaries who were placed in these camps.
I'm wondering what people's opinions are on these prison labor camps? Do you condone them entirely? Do you condone them being used for counter-revolutionaries but not for other criminals? Or do you oppose them entirely?
http://libcom.org/library/workers-against-work-michael-seidman-1
[from chapter 4]
The Spanish Revolution, like the Russian, also had its labor camps (campos de trabajo), initiated at the end of 1936 by Juan Garc¡a Oliver, the CNT Minister of Justice in the central government of Largo Caballero. As we have noted, Garc¡a Oliver was a very influential fa¡sta and the most important figure in the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias, the de facto government of Catalonia in the first months of the Revolution. In no way could this promoter of Spanish labor camps be considered marginal to the Spanish Left in general and to Spanish anarchosyndicalism in particular. According to his supporters, Garc¡a Oliver had established the principle of equal justice under law that the Spanish bourgeoisie had previously ignored. The work camps were considered an integral part of the "constructive work of the Spanish Revolution," and many anarchosyndicalists took pride in the "progressive" character of the reforms by the CNT Minister of Justice. The CNT recruited guards for the "concentration camps," as they were also called, from within its own ranks. Certain militants feared that the CNT's resignation from the government after May 1937 might delay this "very important project" of labor camps.72[...]
[...] Understandable resentment against a bourgeoisie, a clergy, and a military whom workers considered unproductive and parasitic crystallized into a demand to reform these groups through productive labor. Anarchosyndicalists endowed work with great moral value; the bourgeoisie, the military, and the clergy were immoral precisely because they did not produce. Thus penal reform meant forcing these classes to labor, to rid them of their sins through work. The Spanish Revolution was, in part, a crusade to convert, by force if necessary, both enemies and friends to the values of work and development.
The ministry of the fa¡sta was proud of its "advanced" ideas and considered its camps more progressive than those in the Soviet Union.74 Garc¡a Oliver promised humanized detention, and CNT representatives investigated complaints of gross negligence, in the L"šrida prison, for example.75 Sometimes, however, the tone of the reformers shifted:
The weeds must be torn out by their roots. There cannot be and must not be pity for the enemies of the people, but . . . their rehabilitation through work and that is precisely what the new ministerial order creating "work camps" seeks. In Spain great irrigation canals, roads, and public works must be built immediately. The trains must be electrified, and all these things should be accomplished by those who conceive of work as a derisive activity or a crime, by those who have never worked. . . . The prisons and penitentiaries will be replaced by beehives of labor, and offenders against the people will have the chance to dignify themselves with tools in hand, and they will see that a pick and a shovel will be much more valuable in the future society than the placid, parasitic life of idleness that had no other aim than to perpetuate the irritating inequality of classes.76
According to a CNT historian, "delinquents, reactionaries, subversives, and suspects were judged by popular tribunals composed of CNT militants and, if found guilty, jailed or condemned to forced labor. Fascists, soldiers who looted, drunkards, criminals, and even syndicalists who abused their power were put behind bars or in work camps where they were forced to build roads."77 Inmates of the work camps reported that they also dug trenches and built railroads. One avid franquista lamented that "duchesses, marchionesses, countesses, wives and daughters of military officers" were forced to harvest grain.78Most who were sent to prisons and work camps were convicted on political charges-which included violating public order, possessing arms, and engaging in fascist activities.79 A much smaller number received sentences for robbery, murder, hoarding, and black marketeering. This last category increased markedly in 1938 when, for example, revenue guards arrested a mason with 2,200 pesetas or another individual carrying 179 eggs.80 The number of prisoners in Catalonia multiplied fivefold during the war. In November 1936, 535 were in Catalan jails; in November 1938 the figure was 2,601. The greatest increase was of women inmates, whose numbers jumped from 18 in November 1936 to 535 two years later. Deserters from the Republican army (more numerous than those from the Nationalist army) filled their own camps, and their numbers increased dramatically in Catalonia during 1938.81
Including your questions... I know there are people on libcom who must know this stuff. Stop hiding! 
It's funny that you post this -- I was going to raise the issue as well, but I was waiting until I had finished Workers Against Work.
From the way Siedman sets it up, (I've only read the intro and a bit of the first chapter) I thought the labor camps were mostly used to keep workers in line, in the sense that CNT militants would send workers who slacked off on the job to the labor camps. To me this is absolutely messed up and makes the CNT seem like just another set of bosses.
That's not really what the passages you quoted describe, however. From those quotes it seems like the people in the labor camp were mainly aristocrats, military people, priests, and criminals of various kinds. If this was the case, I might not be totally against it. Sure, it's not pretty and not something we want in an ideal society, but the vindictive side of me likes the idea of making aristocrats and bourgeois work a little bit...
If the CNT was putting workers in these labor camps for not working hard enough or whatever I think that's totally fucked up. By the way, Siedman talks about CNT members becoming "managers" of factories?? How did they justify that? Were they at least elected by the workers?
Yeah, I guess any big, violent revolution is going to have to put people in prison of some type...if they have to be in prison they might as well work? But I don't know how you could force people to work in a humane way..maybe some sort of incentive system?
Anyway, the CNT is not an organization we should try to replicate, necessarily. They made a lot of mistakes and did a lot of dumb/counterrevolutionary shit. It kind of bums me out actually because it seems like one of the only historical examples we have of something that approaches libertarian communism has been discredited to a huge degree given the self managed capitalism/statism of many parts of the CNT. Anyway, thanks for posting this.
Btw, how does this/other warts on the Spanish Revolution effect our use of it as a positive example of libertarian communism? For example this article, which I think is great, says
Can we really claim that the increased efficiency of factories during the Spanish Revolution was due to workers understanding it was to their benefit if the CNT was threatening to send people to labor camps and had this whole bureaucratic element?