Camillo Berneri, Decolonization, and the Spanish Revolution - Jeff Shantz

The present period of imperialist atrocities, and associated debates within anarchist movements over anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, land back, and national liberation, show both a need to engage with historic anarchist positions on colonialism and imperialism, and a certain lack of familiarity with them. Many important historic anarchist arguments have been overlooked or forgotten.

Revisiting and highlighting historic anarchist positions, I want to reflect on some of that overlooked work in brief and accessible ways. I began with a short presentation of Victor Serge’s opposition to the colonization of Congo by the Belgian state and its social democratic leadership of the day.

Now I want to examine Camillo Berneri’s perspectives on anti-colonialism in the context of the Spanish Revolution. A, sadly, largely forgotten figure even among anarchists, Berneri was an active anarchist fighter and trenchant thinker who contributed much to the development of internationalist anarchism in the early decades of the twentieth century. Active in the Italian anarchist organization the Unione Anarchica Italiana (Italian Anarchist Communist Union) he was forced into exile from Italy for his militant organizing against fascism. He would fight in Spain, organizing an Italian anarchist column, and was murdered by Stalinists during the May Days in Barcelona in 1937.

His experiences in Spain cemented in Berneri’s mind the fundamental, inextricable, connection between imperialism and colonialism and the revolution. This conclusion made him especially critical of the Republican indifference, even spiritlessness, regarding Moroccan independence, and the failure of anarchists to confront it. Berneri’s hard gained perspective placed what we would today call decolonization at the very heart of social revolution. And at the center of material strategies and tactics for victory.

Berneri, Imperialism, “Decolonization,” and Revolution

Moroccan nationalists had indeed made contact with the CNT-FAI and negotiated an agreement for limited autonomy, but the Madrid government had retreated largely in fear of angering the imperialist British and French governments. Berneri expressed his displeasure, especially that anarchists had not strenuously fought for Moroccan autonomy.

This came forcefully in his “The Anarchists in Government in Spain — Open Letter to Comrade Federica Montseny” which appeared in Guerra di Classe (13) on March 21, 1936. Berneri is gracious in acknowledging Montseny’s cordial reactions to previous criticism he has made, which even he recognizes as perhaps “unjust and excessive,” and willingness to receive his continued criticisms. After outlining previous disagreements over the nature of the anarchist movement in Russia and of the Bolsheviks, Berneri gets to the pressing point in Spain. And that is nothing less than the failure of the anarchists in government to take what we would now term a decolonial approach to Morocco. As fatally, the anarchists took an approach to France and Britain that should be described as imperialist.

The letter remonstrates,

“You are in a government that has offered France and Britain advantages in Morocco, whereas, since July 1936, it would have been necessary to proclaim of officially the political autonomy of Morocco. I can imagine what you, anarchist, must think of this affair which is as disgraceful as it is stupid; but I believe that the time has come to make it known that you and the other anarchist ministers are not in agreement as regards the nature and the purport of such propositions.”

Berneri recognized the broader revolutionary aspect of autonomy for Morocco. He saw it as posing a clearly threatening, potentially revolutionary, undermining of French and British colonialism. A spark for an unsettling of imperial systems of domination. Berneri saw this as essential work of the first order. In his words:

“For such a policy we need money and we need urgently to send agitators and organisers as emissaries to all the centres of Arab migration, into all the frontier zones of French Morocco. On the fronts in Aragon, the Centre, the Asturias and Andalusia a few Moroccans would be enough to fulfil the role of propagandists (through the radio, tracts, etc.).”

Berneri stresses the significance of this in strenuous and unambiguous terms, saying that the very possibility of truly insurrectionary advance hangs in the balance. He argues:

“It follows that one cannot simultaneously guarantee British and French interests in Morocco and carry on with insurrectionary work. València is continuing the policies of Madrid. This must change. The concentration of troops coming from Morocco, the acts of piracy against ‘Canaries’ end ‘Balearics,’ the capture of Malaga are the consequences of this inactivity."

Through his connections with Italian antifascists, Berneri knew of the movement of Moroccan trops by Italy, using Nazi Germany’s Ju52 supply planes. In his article “The Third Stage,” in Guerra di Class (5) of December 2, 1936, Berneri notes: “The Italian government is recruiting ‘volunteers’ for Franco and setting them down in their thousands in Portugal and Spanish Morocco.”

In “What can we do?,” in Guerra di Class (7) of July 18, 1937, Berneri had already laid out the significance of a decolonial approach with regard to Morocco. He argues strenuously for Moroccan autonomy, while also suggesting that this could be the starting point for a decolonial wave threatening the imperialist order. And Berneri stresses that anarchists must agitate to expand anticolonial revolt, writing:

“The operational base of the fascist army is Morocco. We must intensify our propaganda in favour of Moroccan autonomy throughout the pan-Islamic area of influence. We must dictate to Madrid unambiguous declarations announcing the abandonment of Morocco and the protection of Moroccan autonomy. France would anxiously envisage the possibility of insurrectionary repercussions in North Africa and in Syria; Great Britain would see the movements for self-rule in Egypt and among Arabs in Palestine growing stronger. We must exploit such anxieties by means of a policy which threatens to unleash revolt throughout the Arab world."

For Berneri, decolonizing work was consistent with, integral to, social revolutionary organizing. This would take the war from a strictly military ground to one of revolution on an internationalist basis (as the fascist reaction already operated). In “Beware, Dangerous Corner!,” in Guerra di Class (3) of October 24th, 1936, he asserts:

“We must master the war, but we shall not master the war by limiting the problem to the strictly military conditions of victory. We must above all take account of the ‘socio — political’ conditions of victory."

"The Civil War in Spain being an international conflict, it is on international ground that we must pose the problem of revolutionary action in terms of war, it is at its weak points: Morocco and Portugal that we must cruelly wound Spanish Fascism. Up till now the obsessing preoccupation with equipment for war has not permitted us to implement a plan of action which carried out in a timely and skilful manner would have been able to frustrate the Fascist Putsch.”

Berneri’s warnings came to fruition as Moroccan recruits to the Spanish “Army of Africa” and the “Regulares“ were deployed effectively as shock troops against the revolutionaries. It is estimated that between 60,000 to 80,000 Moroccans served in the war. They were deployed in virtually every major battle often being deployed by the Nationalists as cannon fodder.

Successful recruitment of Moroccans by the Nationalist forces played significant parts in their eventual victory. It is suggested that Nationalist advances in western Spain were due largely to the Army of Africa. It could also be suggested that the failure to decolonize gave substantial rope to other colonial powers.

References

Berneri, Camillo. “War and Revolution: Writings on Spain.” https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/camillo-berneri-war-and-revolution

Shantz, Jeff. “Victor Serge’s Anarchist Opposition to Belgian Colonialism in Congo.” https://libcom.org/article/victor-serges-anarchist-opposition-belgian-colonialism-congo-jeff-shantz