1. The Weakness of the Barcelonan Bourgeoisie
An examination of the different paths of France and Spain illuminates the origins of the Spanish civil war and Revolution and the tenacity of revolutionary ideologies in the latter country. Politically, the Spanish, unlike the French, never forced a lasting separation of the Church from the state and the military from the civilian government; economically, Spanish industrial and agrarian elites created less wealth than their French counterparts. A comparison of the Spanish and French economies helps place in perspective the separate historiographical debates on supposed Catalan dynamism and alleged French backwardness.
In agriculture, even given France's greater natural resources and fertile soil, the differences were significant. In 1935 French wheat yields were almost double the Spanish, and French vineyards yielded 49.13 hectolitres per hectare compared to Spain's 11.63.1 In industry, the French made 17 times as much pig iron and 10.5 times as much crude steel as the Spanish. In 1935 France consumed 2.2 times the amount of raw cotton and had 5 times as many cotton spindles. The French industrial infrastructure and service sector were also considerably stronger. In 1930 France possessed 2.5 times as much railway line, carried 4.6 times as much freight, and 6.7 times as many passengers. Spain had 304,000 radios, France 2,626,000. In 1935 France produced 5 times more electrical energy than Spain. Even in tourism the French were in the lead, with foreign tourists spending over 9 times more than in Spain.2 The two countries developed the nearly classic trading relation of an industrial to an agrarian nation: the French exported manufactured goods, and the Spanish shipped agricultural products. In 1934 the largest French exports to Spain were, in order of importance, automobiles and parts, other motor vehicles, silk, iron and steel, and chemical products. Spain sent to France fruits, sulphur, wine, lead, and fresh vegetables.
Although Catalonia was more dynamic than other Spanish regions, it did not or could not escape the weaknesses that characterized industry in other areas of the peninsula. The Catalan bourgeoisie had industrialized to some extent and had produced a respectable textile industry in the nineteenth century, but by the opening of the twentieth century this industry was in decline, and the Catalans had difficulty forging others to take its place. An exploration of the state of Catalan and particularly Barcelonan industry is essential to any critical understanding of what the unions and their militants desired and accomplished when they seized control of Barcelona's factories and shops. To comprehend Barcelona's industry and industrialists, we must examine certain aspects of its economic, political, and cultural history in the first third of the twentieth century. First is the feebleness of its economy, compared to France and especially to Paris, where the bourgeoisie built modern and basically national industries in automobiles, aviation, and other sectors. Barcelonan industry remained rooted in the nineteenth century and dominated by branches, such as textiles, that were identified with the first industrial revolution. More advanced sectors, if they existed, were largely controlled and propelled by foreign capital; native industries depended for protection on enormous tariffs granted by Madrid. Second is the backwardness of Barcelona's industrial economy, which paralleled the fragility of the agriculture of most regions of Spain. Industrial backwardness resulted in a low standard of living for workers that promoted a climate of violent social unrest. Barcelonan owners reacted to revolutionary and counterrevolutionary terrorism by supporting militaristic and repressive policies to maintain order; the principle of separation of military from civilian government was as foreign to them as it was to many other Spanish elites. Like many upper-class Andalusians and Castilians, the Catalans supported the pronunciamientos of Primo de Rivera and Franco. Third, from the available evidence, the industrialists shared the religious faith of their Iberian counterparts; some relied on a rigid Catholicism to uphold spiritual order just as others depended on the repressive power of the military to maintain public order. Neither Catalan nor other Spanish owners enthusiastically supported the separation between Church and state.
The lack of industry and the weakness of the urban bourgeoisie in Castile, the center of Spain, is well known, and the Catalan success in fostering a bourgeois culture with its values of work, thrift, and industry is often contrasted with the lack of Castilian development. Yet even at its summit in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Catalan cotton industry, the base of Catalan industrialization, was weak in comparison with its foreign competitors. For example, in the Catalan cotton industry each worker transformed 66 kilograms of cotton per year in contrast to the United States' industry, where each worker transformed 1,500 kilograms of cotton per year. At the end of the nineteenth century this industry's growth rate dropped from 5.5 percent to 2.3 percent per year between 1880 and 1913.3 This decline would have been even greater if Spain had not retained its protected colonial market in Cuba and Puerto Rico until 1898, the year of the Spanish defeat by the United States. After 1898 exports to the former colonies declined drastically. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the largest spinning mill in Catalonia had twenty-five thousand spindles in contrast to the fifty thousand of the average British or French spinning establishment.4
The weakness of their textile industry brought a constant demand from Catalan industrialists (and, notably, some working-class organizations) for tariff protection by Madrid. By the end of the nineteenth century the Catalans' demand for protection had resulted in a pact with conservative and traditionalist Castilian and Andalusian landlords who also desired protection for their unproductive and backward agriculture.5 Thus, the Catalan industrialists sold their high-priced textiles to a poor but protected market in which the level of consumption was very low.
Although the cotton and textile industries were certainly the most important of the Catalan enterprises, the regional economic growth in the nineteenth century was not limited to textiles. Railroads were constructed, but these were dominated by foreign, mainly French, capital and technology.6 Mines began to be exploited, but again the exploiters were often foreigners, not Catalan or even Spanish. It is estimated that 50 percent of Spanish mines belonged to foreigners who were responsible for much of the concentration and modernization of Spanish industry. Orders for agricultural, textile, and transportation machinery went mostly to outsiders since the Catalans had failed to build a potent metallurgical or machine-tool industry. At the turn of the century, Catalonia did not even have a blast furnace.7
Vicens Vives, the influential Catalan historian, has attributed the responsibility for Catalonia's failure to develop heavy industry to "the absence of large seams of iron and soft coal."8 The lack of mineral resources, however, only partially explains the weakness of heavy industry in Catalonia in the nineteenth century. The geographical and geological factors may be important, but the Catalan bourgeoisie often neglected to invest in modernization of the productive forces. Catalans preferred other forms of investment, such as secure foreign bonds or real estate. Vicens Vives himself noted that in 1865, when phylloxera destroyed French vines and Catalan wine prices soared, some growers "quickly parted with their accumulated wealth in a life of lavish expenditure and pleasure in Barcelona."9
By the end of the century the Catalan bourgeoisie was losing what little industrial dynamism it had possessed. It had built a textile industry that, while respectable, nonetheless suffered from low productivity and undermechanization. Being incapable of exporting in great quantities, it depended on an impoverished home market. Other established industrial sectors, such as shipbuilding, shipping, and Barcelona's port activity, were also declining.10 From 1870 to 1910, the Spanish gross national product fell rapidly relative to the rest of Western Europe.11 On the eve of World War I, Spain was dependent on foreign nations for many raw materials, finished products, and even foodstuffs. The limited growth of metallurgy, chemicals, electricity, and urban transportation (tramways), like the railroads of an earlier period, was propelled by foreign capital and technology, but these imports compensated only partially for the reluctance of Spaniards to invest in national industries.12 Spanish and Catalan industries were unable to fulfill the demand for machinery, steel, iron, ships, coal, and coke. In 1914 the cotton industry, largely located in Catalonia, imported 98 percent of its spindles from Britain.13 Even leading Catalan businessmen such as Guillermo Graell, the head of the Catalan employers' association (Fomento de trabajo nacional), lamented the foreign control of Spanish industry.14
Many Catalan employers missed a great opportunity to modernize and develop their businesses during World War I. Neutral Spain was able to sell to all the warring nations and to the markets that the combatants had previously controlled. Since its imports of capital goods and advanced machinery from the belligerents decreased substantially, Spain created new firms that relied on the use of inexpensive labor.15 Spanish exports quickly expanded; the country unexpectedly had a favorable balance of trade for the first time in many years. The Catalan and Barcelonan entrepreneurs profited greatly by supplying European and Latin American countries that could not purchase English goods. Despite the windfall profits, the major defects of Barcelona's industry-small size, atomization, technical backwardness, and lack of organization-persisted.16 Industrialists electrified and mechanized certain textile firms, but much of the profits that they could have used to modernize antiquated machinery, concentrate atomized firms, develop new industries, and free the region from foreign economic domination went elsewhere.17 The Barcelonan bourgeoisie preferred to buy new foreign cars, speculate in German marks or Berlin real estate, or build luxurious houses. The enormous opportunity of the First World War was dissipated and a predictable postwar crisis hit Catalan industry.18 Many small chemical and drug firms initiated to provide substitutes for German exports were quickly eliminated when normal commerce resumed. The great industrial powers rapidly recovered the markets they had ceded to Spain.
In Spain in general and Barcelona in particular, entrepreneurs often relied on outright repression to control or subdue a combative working class, which had been adversely affected by the inflation that the war provoked. Repeated acts of sabotage, terrorism, and assassination occurred; they were much rarer phenomena in Paris after World War I. Perhaps above all, Barcelonan employers feared state weakness or impotence. In 1919-1920 the industrialists claimed that ineffective local and national governments had permitted the shortening of the working day to eight hours, allowing "intolerable" indiscipline inside the factories where management's authority was ignored and workers became the real bosses.19 The Fomento believed that only strong measures by the state could restore normality. The climate of strikes and assassinations, in which "two hundred fifty martyrs of the employers' cause" lost their lives, led to "no other solution, as bad as it seems, than the lock-out." The first duty of the state was to uphold the law in the face of a syndicalism that exploited "bourgeois cowardice." Barcelonan employers' organizations had a long history of directly subsidizing the Guardia civil and other policing agencies.20 Apparently through funds to a number of governmental agencies, the employers claimed to have boosted the morale of the forces of public order. The Fomento praised the "wonderful performance" of Generals Mart¡nez Anido and Arlegu¡, who by "attacking the union . . . and its leaders . . . diminished terrorism."21 These officers had instituted repressive policies, and union officials had accused them of supporting employers' hitmen (pistoleros) against those of the CNT. Barcelonan industrialists were disturbed when the generals were transferred in 1922. Large numbers of the Catalan upper class (the list of organizations and personalities was almost endless) regretted the removal of the fearsome pair. In a farewell ceremony for General Arlegu¡, the president of the Fomento praised the general for "imposing special methods of public order and social hygiene," which halted "anarchy" and restored "authority."22 After the dismissal of both generals and the legalization of the CNT, employers asserted that terrorism became even more violent than previously. They demanded that the government destroy the union by whatever means available, if necessary by declaring a state of siege and suspending individual liberties.23 In this tense atmosphere, influential Catalan employers clung to the Church. Many believed that the moment was not ripe for the separation either of Church from state or of military from civilian government. Guillermo Graell was perhaps the most striking example of an important Catalan businessman whose clericalism was unshakable. He was a militant Catholic, and his writings, The Religious Question and Essay on the Necessity to Return to Religion (1921), demonstrated the close spiritual ties between the Catholic church and an important part of the Catalan bourgeoisie. Graell's writings won the full endorsement of his colleagues at the Fomento, who called them "brilliant"; in 1934 a monument was erected to honor the "lamented master."24
Graell's essays were revealing. He scorned almost every non-Catholic conviction. He attacked "excessive Greek anthropomorphism," along with Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Kant, Leibniz, Hegel, and (needless to say) Marx. Adam Smith he criticized for assailing both the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. In general, the secretary general of the Fomento sustained the "failure of reason against faith":25 "More science" only created "more grief." Graell's opinions were supported thirteen years later by Victor Gonz lez, whose Catechism "for all social classes" assailed the Reformation, Enlightenment, French Revolution, Rousseau, and all those-such as the anarchists-who believed that man was good.26 Only belief in God could restrain men and secure the social order. Graell attacked Protestantism because its variety of sects produced "anarchy." Protestantism was the result of the instinctual refusal of the "Anglo-Saxon race, especially the German" to submit to the great capital of the Latin race, Rome. Protestant individualism was undesirable, as were Lutheranism and even Jansenism.27 The reformed religion disturbed the conscience: "The result was . . . [that] every Protestant was a pope, a Bible in his hand. This is anarchy."
The head of the major Catalan employers' association despised materialism and believed that Jesus offered more to impoverished workers than pagan utility did. According to Graell, resignation and suffering led to God's love. Indeed, paradise on earth consisted of knowing the art of suffering. Graell advised a friend who complained of his poverty, "Contrary to popular opinion, you will be happier in your poverty than the rich man who has become wealthy through questionable means." "The wealthy" were "an insignificant minority, and they lived less joyfully than the poor. Idleness created boredom, which was the scourge of the upper classes." Graell affirmed that the poor who hated poverty were "uncontrollable" and lamented that the impoverished had lost their patience and resignation, "which were the sunshine and charm of their life."
From his position in the Catalan employers' association Graell did not propagate the Spanish equivalent of Samuel Smiles's thoughts on self-help, the American Horatio Alger stories, or the French carriÅ re ouverte aux talents. Instead he preached resignation and submission. The present "colossal social war" was the result of the loss of "the belief in anything beyond worldly existence." Contemporary workers were filled with hatred and blasphemy, in sharp contrast to their peaceful and joyful ancestors who belonged to guilds, attended religious processions, and were generally devout. It is significant that Graell declared that the new leaders of the proletariat were "almost all climbers (arrivistas)." The term arrivista (from the French) revealed Graell's dislike and condemnation of the social climber, who was often the object of at least ambivalent praise in more dynamic societies. The Catalan employers' desires for religious order and their fears of revolution led many to search for a power that could restore what they considered stability. In 1923 they supported the pronunciamiento of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, who promised them religion, regional autonomy, high tariffs, and, above all, "social peace." Following in the footsteps of Mart¡nez Anido and Arlegu¡, Primo-who had been the Captain-General of Barcelona in 1922-1923-won the support of Catalan employers through his repressive policies against anarchosyndicalists. In fact, Catalan employers proved willing to subordinate their demands for regional autonomy to their need for social stability. The Catalan bourgeoisie appreciated the sharp drop in "social crimes" under the general's dictatorship.28 According to the businessmen, only when the authorities took a firm stand could strikes be quickly terminated. This reliance, if not dependence, on the police power of the state was a constant in the 1920s and 1930s. Prominent Catalan businessmen such as Guillermo Graell had hoped that Roman Catholicism could furnish an ideology to aid in maintaining order, but their colleagues in the Fomento felt more secure with the police and army behind them. It should be noted that the forces of order were Spanish, not Catalan.
The Spanish state protected not only the persons of the industrialists but also their businesses. The government under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera provided the region's industrialists with one of the highest tariffs in Europe to save industries unable to export sufficiently and still dependent on a miserable domestic market. Catalan industrialists were delighted with the protectionist zeal of Primo's rule, which had eliminated the threat of the previous constitutional government to reduce tariffs.29 Laws of 1926 and 1927 led to the charge by the League of Nations that Spain was the most protectionist country in the world.30 If its goal was to provide the time necessary for Spanish, particularly Catalan, industry to expand to compete with more advanced nations, protectionism failed. Indeed, even for the Catalan entrepreneurs it was a two-edged sword that could obstruct Catalonia's development. It was a policy that Barcelonan employers' organizations generally defended; for example, the Fomento blamed the failure to establish an automotive industry in Catalonia on the lack of tariffs.31
Considering the state of their industries, Catalan businessmen were understandably not in the forefront of scientific organization of work. Taylor's Direcci¢n de los talleres: Estudio sobre la organizaci¢n del trabajo, was published in Barcelona in 1914, but his Principles of Scientific Management was not translated until 1970. A knowledgeable analyst of Taylor's system argued that it could not be applied in Spain.32 The "primitive level" of organization in Spanish workshops rendered workers apathetic and totally unfit for the new system; except for "small groups" in Catalonia and other "advanced" regions, the undisciplined workers would reject new methods of organizing work and remain impervious to incentives of pay. Although an international meeting on scientific organization of work was held in Barcelona in 1921, the following year one author noted "the nearly complete lack of literature concerning the subject."33 Although one major concern-the Maquinista, which made locomotives-introduced certain Tayloristic techniques in 1924, its engineer asserted that Spain lacked qualified personnel and needed to train workers in time-measurement techniques.34 In 1925 Spain significantly increased its participation in the International Congress on Scientific Organization of Work and sent one of the largest delegations to the convention at Rome. Yet according to industrialists, the conventioneers "gave the impression that they were sight-seeing tourists who had come to admire the beauty of Rome rather than scholars who were seeking information on one of the most interesting problems of production in our times."35 Taylorism had been applied only "in fragments" in Spain, and the Spanish did not comprehend the "essence" of the system. The employers' journal, Exito, revealed considerable ignorance about Taylorism. It claimed that "all those who work in scientifically organized factories eventually regard their bosses as their best friends, instead of enemies."36 Taylor's method had doubled production in a "great number of American factories" and had completely eliminated strikes. Employers who adopted scientific organization of work did not fire workers but taught them the best way to perform their tasks.37 Gual Villab¡, the head of the Fomento in 1929, confirmed that Spain was considerably behind England, France, Germany, and even the Soviet Union in Taylorization.38 Although Spain did participate in the congress at Amsterdam in 1932, only a small number of industries found limited applications for new methods of organizing work, which explains in part the persistently low industrial productivity during the growth decade of the 1920s.
The Second Republic (1931-1939) had little choice but to increase the protective barriers that Primo de Rivera had maintained. For example, Hispano-Suiza, which employed fifteen hundred workers, threatened to shut down in part because of the "recent decision by the Ministry of Economy" to liberalize automobile trade.39 Its workers asserted that "national factories" could not compete with foreigners.40 Spanish exports dropped from 10.3 percent of national income in 1930 to 4 percent in 1935.41 The increased trade barriers had paradoxical consequences. While they isolated Spain from the worst effects of the Great Depression, they forced Catalan and Barcelonan industry to continue to rely on the markets of the peninsula; despite some growth in the first third of the twentieth century, these domestic markets were too poor to stimulate industry.
Even though the Second Republic attempted to respond to industrialists' complaints by raising tariffs, Barcelona's employers distrusted it. They saw a direct correspondence between political instability and strikes, and from 1930 to 1936 they complained that the lack of an energetic government resulted in disturbances inside the factory and on the streets: "It is the state which has the unavoidable obligation to control social peace and the calm development of labor."42 With the advent of the republic, moderate Catalan republicans who wanted to imitate the French model-which, as shall be seen, was able to integrate prominent revolutionary syndicalists to the state apparatus-were frustrated by their capitalist elite's stubborn adherence to a repressive and militaristic concept of authority.43 In 1931 businessmen felt that the government would not defend them and that the unions had again grown too powerful. The sindicatos, they claimed, were controlling hiring and firing, raising salaries, diminishing working hours, and abolishing piecework. Two hundred employers' organizations protested the "anarchy" of the opening months of the republic.44 "No civilized country," they asserted, would tolerate the atmosphere of "violence" and "lawlessness" that would eventually lead to "catastrophe." In addition, "intense political activity" had aggravated "social problems."45 Increased social tensions brought a mass of worried new members to the Fomento. For these recent adherents, the Second Republic meant only disorder and laxity; the entrepreneurs were dismayed by the passivity of the authorities in the face of the "absurd burning of convents," which had taken place outside Catalonia. Simultaneous but seemingly uncoordinated protest movements in the countryside and in the city outraged property owners. In the summer of 1931 CNT unions campaigned for a 40-percent reduction in urban rents, and in the fall sharecroppers and smaller tenants (rabassaires) appropriated the owners' share of the harvest.46 According to the owners, sabotage and assassination attempts were again on the rise. The Catalan upper class, represented by twenty-six associations, protested against a gun-control law that many thought would disarm them in the midst of multiplying robberies and assaults.47 In the summer of 1932 rural proprietors feared that peasants who kept the owners' part of the harvest might come under CNT influence.
Given the explosive political and social situation, Catalans' increased reluctance to invest in the region's industries is not surprising. In 1931 the Fomento de trabajo nacional censured "many" Catalans who had exported their capital.48 Those who had lost money because of the catastrophic situation of the German economy were told not to complain. "The antipatriotic attitude of the timid" had caused great damage to the Spanish economy, which, the Fomento claimed, was basically in good condition despite political problems. The Fomento wondered "how many Spaniards will suffer serious losses because they foolishly believe that it is safer abroad than in their own country." Private investment did fall considerably between 1931 and 1933.49 The Spanish propensity for depositing money in savings banks was generally much less pronounced than the French. In the early 1930s one savings account existed for every 6.6 Spaniards, compared to one for every 2.1 Frenchmen.50 Furthermore, important Spanish savings institutions were reluctant to invest in industry during the Primo dictatorship and the Second Republic. Many savers preferred what they considered the safest forms of investment-real estate and government bonds.
The Fomento, however, could on occasion find kind words for the Republican government when it crushed the "revolutionary strikes" of January 1932 in Alto Llobregat and other Catalan towns. According to the employers, the authorities had reacted with energy, and the republican prime minister, Manuel Aza¤a, had spoken to the Cortes (legislature) with "fortitude and sincerity." The Fomento demanded harsh punishment for those responsible for the revolutionary strikes but in August 1932 pleaded for leniency for the organizers of General Sanjuro's failed pronunciamiento of that year.51 Again in 1934, the Fomento wanted to impose severe punishment on revolutionary offenders and implied that in towns where the Guardia civil was few in number rebellions were more likely to occur. Because the Catalan employers needed the Spanish state to defend their enterprises, they rejoiced at the lack of support given to the Catalan nationalist uprising of 6 October 1934. The Fomento cited with approval an editorial in the Diario de Madrid that lauded the great number of "good Spaniards" in Catalonia who were completely unresponsive to "separatist craziness."52 Even during the so-called bienio negro, the period of right-wing rule in 1934 and 1935, the Fomento criticized the ineffectiveness of the government to stop attacks against people and property and called for even more repression. Considerable unrest persisted in the streets and in the factories, where workers often showed only "a minimal desire to work." In addition, many Catalan industrialists disliked what they considered the frequent capitulations of the regional government of Catalonia, the Generalitat, to working-class demands.
During the Second Republic, the Barcelonan capitalists continued to subsidize the police directly. On 21 September 1931 the Fomento reported that it had collected money for the families of the guardias injured or killed in the general strike.53 It praised the heroism and discipline of the guard and other policemen whose presence, it believed, guaranteed that normal life could continue. In October the Fomento, the C mara oficial de comercio y navegaci¢n, the C mara oficial de propiedad urbana, the Sociedad econ¢mica barcelon"šs de amigos del pa¡s, and other organizations of the economic elite amassed 111,117 pesetas for the Guardia civil and security forces. Publicly, the Fomento announced that new barracks for the increased number of guardias were necessary because the population of the city had grown, but privately the Fomento was franker and expressed its doubts concerning the wisdom of locating these barracks in working-class neighborhoods where they might be attacked during periods of "revolutionary unrest."54 This barracks' construction project had originated during the era of General Mart¡nez Anido, when Catalan organizations promised to buy the necessary land on which the state would erect the buildings. With this agreement in mind, the C mara de comercio and the Asociaci¢n de banqueros had already donated 50,000 pesetas each by the spring of 1932. During the Second Republic contributions to aid strikebreaking soldiers and guardias amounted to hundreds of thousands of pesetas. These direct subsidies to the police and military demonstrated the strong links between employers and the repressive forces of the state. Under these circumstances, the Catalan owners were hardly enthusiastic about the separation of the military from the civilian government.
Likewise, the most prominent Catalan industrialists did not advocate separation between the Church and the state and believed that military power assured public order as the Church guaranteed spiritual order. Upper-class educational opportunities were largely parochial; although some of the Catalan elite may have been Voltairean about religion-believing it to be necessary for the people and not for themselves-their representatives were often publicly devout and their businesses frequently ostensibly pious.55 Catholic religiosity remained an essential component of the social system of many Catalan industrial communities.56 The representatives of the Lliga regionalista or Lliga catalana, which was the party of many property owners, identified Spanish culture with Catholicism.57 The Lliga accused the entire Catalan left of desiring to dechristianize the region and its schools, as had occurred in the Soviet Union and Mexico. During the election campaign of 1936 the Lliga appealed to the conservatism and piety of women, who had been granted the vote during the Second Republic.58 During the Second Republic, many Barcelonan enterprises deteriorated. With perhaps over fifty thousand workers in textiles, the city of Barcelona was the most important textile center in Spain.59 On the eve of the Revolution, the firms that working-class organizations would control remained largely artisanal.60 Although the textile industry included several large factories with modern equipment, it was generally dispersed into "industrial crumbs," small family firms lacking modern machinery and organization; their primitive equipment and ignorance of methods of rationalization prevented cost-cutting measures.61 Often when these small and uneconomical units closed down, another industrialist would buy their old machinery at bargain prices to employ it again. Production was rarely standardized or specialized, and a seemingly infinite number of producers manufactured a wide variety of products. Many textile firms could perform only one process, for instance weaving; they were forced to give their fabric to other, equally small, firms for staining or dyeing. This entailed expensive and slow production. Fierce competition among large numbers of firms kept profits and wages low and also hindered modernization and rationalization of the industry. When the post-1932 economic crisis decreased consumption and increased unemployment, the Generalitat took steps in 1936 to prevent overproduction by limiting factory expansion and growth.62 The Generalitat's solution obviously did not provide a long-term answer to the problems of an industry characterized by underconcentration and undercapitalization.
Metallurgy was plagued by similar problems. In the mid-1930s most of the Barcelonan metallurgical industries' thirty-five thousand workers were dispersed into tiny companies and workshops that averaged fewer than fifty workers per firm and often depended on foreign technicians and technology. As in the rest of Spain, metalworking did not propel the region toward self-sustained industrial growth. Even exceptionally large enterprises in this sector were industrially backward. The pride of Barcelona's mechanical construction, the Maquinista Terrestre y Mar¡tima, with over one thousand workers, made locomotives and railroad cars. Thus well into the twentieth century its production centered on the railroad, originally a nineteenth-century industry. The Maquinista did not export significantly; its main customer was the Spanish government, from which it constantly demanded protective tariffs against foreign competition.63
It is important to note that by 1936 Spain had not developed a substantial motor-vehicle industry. Many Spanish automakers, discouraged by the poor market of the peninsula, had left Spain for the more favorable commercial climate of France. For example, Hispano-Suiza, founded in Barcelona with Spanish capital and workers, moved the majority of its operations from its native city to the larger Paris market before the First World War.64 Most automotive factories in Spain failed in the 1920s, and in the 1930s only a handful continued to produce vehicles.65 In 1935 Spain imported over 95 percent of its automobiles.66 In contrast to France and even to Italy, a country which also had a limited national market, neither Spain nor Catalonia succeeded in establishing a powerful automotive industry.
The aviation industry was as weak as the automotive. Some small planes were built in Barcelona in the 1930s, but the industry was far from complete or independent. Here also the market was dominated by foreigners, as a consequence of Spanish industrial backwardness.67 Prior to the civil war, with the exception of motors, Spain made only obsolete aviation components with foreign patents and licenses. Both observers and combatants often remarked on the domination of foreign equipment in aviation and weaponry during the civil war.
In this bleak portrait of Catalan and Barcelonan industrial development, the electrical industry with twelve thousand workers in Catalonia seems at first glance exceptional. The growth of this industry had been rapid after World War I; in the 1930s Catalonia reported that its level of electrical consumption per inhabitant was comparable to that in England and France. Despite this claim, the Catalan electrical industry lagged considerably behind the French. With 612 different enterprises in Catalonia and Barcelona, the electrical industry lacked the concentration that characterized its French counterpart; competition between these "industrial crumbs" produced uneconomical and unnecessary duplication. The Catalan industry lacked standardization, and firms often had substations for electrical transformation and distribution that produced energy with diverse characteristics.68 In contrast to the Parisian electrical industry, which had standardized and unified diverse companies around the beginning of World War I, the electrical industry in Barcelona remained a hodgepodge of small, often obsolete, power plants and distribution centers.
As in other modern sectors, the largest electrical companies were ruled by foreign capital and technology.69 A certain Pearson, an American, had promoted hydroelectric development in Catalonia; Belgian and English capital were also involved in this branch. Spain was not economically healthy enough to wrest control from the foreigners. The manufacture of electrical equipment was particularly retrograde, and the most important manufacturers were also foreign. Once more, the smallness of the Catalan firms producing electrical equipment kept their prices high and placed them in an uncompetitive position. Most of the companies made domestic, not industrial, products such as radios, lamps, and small appliances.70
Like the electrical, aviation, and automotive industries, the chemical industry depended on foreigners, and Catalan firms were relatively backward. The statistics available on sixty-nine chemical firms in Barcelona indicate that nineteen firms had between one and ten workers; thirty-five firms had from eleven to fifty workers; eight had between fifty and one hundred workers; and only six employed between one hundred and five hundred workers.71 The most important exception, the Cros Company with about two thousand workers in branches in many Spanish cities, was linked to English capital; it monopolized Spanish fertilizer production before the Revolution. Although the output of fertilizers grew significantly in the first third of the twentieth century, Spanish production was insufficient to supply the country's needs.72 Spain imported well over one hundred thousand tons of fertilizers per year from France, Italy, and Germany.
In urban transportation, Barcelona's metro was "the product of private initiative of little ambition" compared to the one in Paris, where "the metropolitan network had been a great and democratic municipal project."73 Port facilities stagnated during the 1930s, and in 1934 the number of tons handled by the port of Barcelona was only slightly higher than in 1913. In 1932 Barcelona, the greatest port in Spain, handled less tonnage than Cherbourg, the third largest port in France.74 The port was in the hands of those who displayed "a suicidal indifference"; its high costs discouraged ships from docking there.75 The Catalan presence on the seas had disappeared, and one expert recommended establishing a new shipping and passenger line with aid from the state, which would prohibit the purchase of vessels two years or older (since Spanish and Catalan companies had the habit of acquiring leftover ships from ports in northern and central Europe). In Spain itself, no ships were suitable for the new line, and the Catalan shipbuilding industry was termed completely decadent and abandoned. Political influence in Madrid, not efficiency or sound shipping practice, was necessary to obtain governmental contracts, and the directors of railroad and maritime companies that received state subsidies were often political appointees who had little concern for competent management.76 In contrast to France and, as will be seen, particularly the Parisian region, Barcelona did not develop major industries, such as motor vehicles and aviation, which were connected with the second industrial revolution. In religion, the city's capitalist elite generally supported the Church, and in politics, the military. How the situation in Barcelona affected the everyday life of Catalan workers and the ideology of the organizations that claimed to represent the working class is the subject of the next chapter.
Notes
1. B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 1750-1970 (New York, 1975). It should be noted that French statistics were taken in the summer and Spanish statistics in the winter, perhaps exaggerating the differences between the two agricultures.
2. Le tourisme, Conseil national "šconomique, AN, F128800.
3. Jordi Nadal, El fracaso de la revoluci¢n industrial en Espa¤a, 1814- 1913 (Barcelona, 1975), p. 210; Carles Sudri..., "La exportaci¢n en el desarrollo de la industria algodonera espa¤ola, 1875-1920," Revista de historia econ¢mica, no. 2 (1983): 371-76; cf. Jordi Nadal, "La industria fabril espa¤ola en 1900: una aproximaci¢n," in La econom¡a espa¤ola en el siglo XX: Una perspectiva hist¢rica, ed. Jordi Nadal, Albert Carreras, and Carles Sudri... (Barcelona, 1987), p. 38.
4. Joseph Harrison, An Economic History of Modern Spain (Manchester, 1978), p. 70. 5. N. S nchez Albornoz, "La integraci¢n del mercado nacional," in Agricultura, comercio colonial y crecimiento econ¢mico en la Espa¤a contempor nea, ed. Jordi Nadal and Gabriel Tortella (Barcelona, 1974), p. 187.
6. Nadal, El fracaso, pp. 30-39; see also Gabriel Tortella Casares, Los or¡genes de capitalismo en Espa¤a (Madrid, 1975).
7. Harrison, Modern Spain, p. 72.
8. Jaime Vicens Vives, An Economic History of Spain, with Jorge Nadal Oller, trans. Frances M. L¢pez Morillas (Princeton, 1969), p. 658.
9. Jaime Vicens Vives, Catalu¤a en el siglo XIX, trans. E. Borras Cubells (Madrid, 1961), p. 65. 10. P. Romeva Ferrer, Hist"¢ria de la ind£stria catalana, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1952), 2:378; Julian Amich, Historia del puerto de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1956), pp. 215-17; Nadal, El fracaso, p. 158; Ivan T. Berend and Gyorgy Ranki, The European Periphery and Industrialization, 1780- 1914, trans. Eva Palmai (Cambridge, 1982), p. 94.
11. Berend and Ranki, European Periphery, p. 154.
12. A. Broder, G. Chastagnaret, and E. Temime, "Capital et croissance dans l'Espagne du XIXÅ me siÅ cle," in Aux origines du retard "šconomique de l'Espagne, XVIe-XIXe siÅ cles (Paris, 1983), p. 78. 13. Nadal, El fracaso, p. 158.
14. Guillermo Graell, Programa econ¢mico, social y pol¡tico para despu"šs de la guerra (Barcelona, 1917), pp. 175-77; Fomento de trabajo nacional, Memoria (Barcelona, 1932).
15. Santiago Rold n and Jos"š Lu¡s Garc¡a Delgado, La formaci¢n de la sociedad capitalista en Espa¤a, with Juan Mu¤oz (Madrid, 1973), 1:23-38.
16. Juan Antonio Lacomba, Introducci¢n a la historia econ¢mica de la Espa¤a contempor nea (Madrid, 1972), p. 424. Gaston Leval, a French anarchist who worked in both countries, observed that the division of labor in Spain remained primitive in comparison to French industry. See his work, El Pr¢fugo (Valencia, 1935).
17. Jordi Maluquer de Motes, "De la crisis colonial a la guerra europea: Veinte a¤os de econom¡a espa¤ola," in La econom¡a espa¤ola en el siglo XX, ed. Jordi Nadal et al. (Barcelona, 1987), p. 88; see Pedro Gual Villab¡, Memorias de un industrial de nuestro tiempo (Barcelona, 1922), for valuable insights into the Barcelonan bourgeoisie during World War I; see also Pau Vila Dinar"šs and Lluis Casassas Sim¢, Barcelona i la seva rodalia al llarg del temps (Barcelona, 1974), p. 394; Guillermo Graell, Ensayo sobre la necesidad de la vuelta a las pr cticas religiosas (Barcelona, 1921), p. 309; Pedro Gual Villab¡, La econom¡a en la industria textil (Barcelona, 1950), p. 18; Joan Sard... and Lluc Beltran, Els problemes de la banca catalana (Barcelona, 1933), p. 22; Jordi Nadal and Carles Sudri..., Hist"¢ria de la caixa de pensions (Barcelona, 1981), p. 172.
18. Francisco Com¡n, "La econom¡a espa¤ola en el per¡odo de entreguerras (1919-35)," in La econom¡a espa¤ola en el siglo XX, ed. Jordi Nadal et al. (Barcelona, 1987), p. 107; Cristina Border¡as Mond"šjar, "La evoluci¢n de la divisi¢n sexual del trabajo en Barcelona, 1924- 1980: Aproximaci¢n desde una empresa del sector servicios-La Compa¤¡a Telef¢nica Nacional de Espa¤a" (Ph.D. diss., University of Barcelona, 1984).
19. Fomento, Memoria, 1919-1920. These annual reports and minutes of employers' organizations are indispensable for the history of the Catalan entrepreneurs after World War I. In 1919 there were approximately two hundred thousand employers in Catalonia, of whom eighty thousand were "producers." According to its figures, in 1925 the Fomento had more than twenty thousand members who were in almost every branch of Catalan industry. Many declarations concerning important issues were signed jointly by the dozens of employers' organizations in Catalonia, which generally agreed on questions of order and discipline.
20. Actas de la junta directiva de la asociaci¢n Fomento de trabajo nacional, 24 November 1922 (hereafter cited as Fomento, Actas).
21. El Trabajo nacional, August 1923.
22. Homenaje tributado por las fuerzas vivas y autoridades de Barcelona al General de Brigada Excmo. Se¤or Don Miguel Arlegu¡ y Bayon"šs (Barcelona, 1922); on Mart¡nez Anido, see Gerald Meaker, The Revolutionary Left in Spain, 1924-1923 (Stanford, 1974), pp. 328-34, 456-58. Colin M. Winston (Workers and the Right in Spain, 1900-1936 [Princeton, 1985], p. 139) has called Arlegu¡ "an authentically cruel individual." 23. El Trabajo nacional, August 1923.
24. Fomento, Memoria, 1934. For general remarks on the Catholicism of Spanish elites, see Stanley Payne, Spanish Catholicism (Madison, 1984), p. 110. On religiosity in the early twentieth century, see Joaqu¡n Romero Maura, La rosa de fuego: Republicanos y anarquistas: La pol¡tica de los obreros barceloneses entre el desastre colonial y la semana tr gica, 1899-1909 (Barcelona, 1975), p. 37. 25. Graell, Ensayo, p. 250; Guillermo Graell, La cuesti¢n religiosa (Barcelona, 1911), pp. 16, 36; ibid., Ensayo, p. 383.
26. V¡ctor Gonz lez de Ech varri y Caste¤eda, Objeto del catecismo: Su inter"šs para todas las clases sociales (Barcelona, 1934), p. 48.
27. Graell, Ensayo, pp. 76-77; Cuesti¢n, p. 32; the following paragraphs are based on Ensayo. 28. Sholomo Ben-Ami, Fascism from Above: The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain, 1923-1930 (Oxford, 1983), p. 332.
29. Ibid., p. 262.
30. Josep Fontana and Jordi Nadal, "Spain 1914-1970," in Fontana Economic History of Europe: Contemporary Economies, ed. Carlo Cipolla (Glasgow, 1976), 2:472.
31. El Trabajo nacional, September 1924. See also the discussions in Fomento, Actas, 24 November 1922; Federaci¢n de fabricantes de hilados y tejidos de Catalu¤a, Memoria, (Barcelona, 1931); Federaci¢n de industrias nacionales, Memoria (Madrid, 1935).
32. C. Montoliu, El sistema de Taylor y su cr¡tica (Barcelona, 1916), p. 63. 33. Josep M. Tallada, L'organitzaci¢ cient¡fica de la industria (Barcelona, 1922), p. 9. 34. Antido Layret Foix, Organizaci¢n de una oficina para el c lculo de los tiempos de fabricaci¢n (Barcelona, 1931), p. 85.
35. El Trabajo nacional, October 1927.
36. Exito, January 1931.
37. Ibid.; cf. F. W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York, 1967), p. 85, who demands "the elimination of all men who refuse to or are unable to adopt the best methods." 38. Pedro Gual Villab¡, Principios y aplicaciones de la organizaci¢n cient¡fica del trabajo: Obra de vulgarizaci¢n (Barcelona, 1929), p. 11.
39. Telegram, 6 July 1931, Leg. 7A, no. 1, AHN.
40. Telegram, Gobernador civil a ministro, 13 November 1931, Leg. 7A, no. 1, AHN. 41. Com¡n, "Entreguerras," p. 136; Maluquer de Motes, "De la crisis," p. 70. 42. Fomento, Memoria, 1930; see also Mercedes Cabrera, La patronal ante la II Rep£blica: Organizaciones y estrategia, 1931-1936 (Madrid, 1983), p. 206.
43. Francisco Madrid, Ocho meses y un d¡a en el gobierno civil de Barcelona: Confesiones y testimonios (Barcelona, 1932), pp. 242-43.
44. Telegram from Bosch Labrus, president of Fomento, 22 July 1931, Leg. 7A, no. 1, AHN. 45. Federaci¢n de fabricantes, Memoria, 1932.
46. Telegrams, July-October 1931, Leg. 7A, no. 1, AHN.
47. Fomento, Memoria, 1931.
48. Ibid.
49. Com¡n, "Entreguerras," p. 112.
50. Annuaire statistique de la France, 1934, p. 477; Nadal and Sudri..., Caixa, pp. 131, 138, 249. 51. Fomento, Memoria, 1932.
52. Ibid., 1934; 1935.
53. Fomento, Actas, 21 September 1931; Fomento, Memoria, 1931.
54. Fomento, Actas, 27 May 1932.
55. On religious education of the elite, see Gary Wray McDonogh, Good Families: A Social History of Power in Industrial Barcelona (Ann Arbor, 1982), pp. 376-77.
56. Ignasi Terrada Saborit, Les col"¢nies industrials: Un estudi entorn del cas de l'Amettla de Merola (Barcelona, 1979), p. 168. The author calls the colony "paternalistic-religious." Historians of Spanish Catholicism have underlined this alliance between the Spanish capitalist elite and the Church. See Joan Connelly Ullman, The Tragic Week: A Study of Anticlericalism in Spain (1875-1912) (Cambridge, Mass., 1968); Jos"š M. S nchez, Reform and Reaction (Chapel Hill, 1964), p. 44; Payne, Spanish Catholicism, pp. 110-12. 57. Bernat Muniesa, La burgues¡a catalana ante la Segunda Rep£blica espa¤ola (1931-1936) (Barcelona, 1986), 2:46-47.
58. Elena Posa, "Cada dona un vot," L'Aven"¡, no. 4 (July-August 1977): 45. 59. See Alberto Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social en Catalu¤a de 1930 a 1936 (Barcelona, 1971); John Brademas, Anarcosindicalismo y revoluci¢n en Espa¤a (1930-1937), trans. Joaqu¡n Romero Maura (Barcelona, 1974); G. Blanco Santamar¡a and E. Ciordia P"šrez, La industria textil catalana (Madrid, 1933), for statistics on workers in various industries in Barcelona and Catalonia. 60. See Pere Gabriel, "La poblaci¢ obrera catalana, una poblaci¢ industrial?," Estudios de historia social 32-33 (January-June 1985): 191, 204.
61. Enrique Diumar¢ y Mim¢, El problema industrial textil: El maquinismo y la cuesti¢n social (Barcelona, 1939), p. 68.
62. Josep Maria Bricall, Pol¡tica econ"¢mica de la Generalitat (1936-1939) (Barcelona, 1978-1979), 1:31-32.
63. See Alberto del Castillo, La Maquinista Terrestre y Mar¡tima: Personaje hist¢rico (1855-1955) (Barcelona, 1955), pp. 418, 461; see also Pedro Fraile, "Crecimiento econ¢mico y demanda de acero: Espa¤a, 1900-1950," in La nueva historia econ¢mica en Espa¤a, ed. Pablo Mart¡n Ace¤a y Leandro Prados de la Escosura (Madrid, 1985), p. 71.
64. Joaqu¡n Ciur¢, Historia del automovil en Espa¤a (Barcelona, 1970), pp. 94-95.
65. Cuadernos de historia econ¢mica de Catalu¤a (1969-1970): 130; El Trabajo nacional, September 1924, listed eight companies that failed.
66. M. Schwartz, "L'industrie automobile," Conseil national "šconomique, AN, F128797. 67. Metalurgia y construcci¢n mec nica (January 1936).
68. Conselleria d'economia (October 1936); F. F. Sintes Olives and F. Vidal Burdils, La industria el"šctrica en Espa¤a (Barcelona, 1933), pp. 48, 128-51.
69. Com¡n, "Entreguerras," p. 136; Carles Sudri..., "Un factor determinante: La energ¡a" in La econom¡a espa¤ola en el siglo XX, ed. Jordi Nadal et al. (Barcelona, 1987), p. 322. 70. Electricidad (January 1936).
71. UGT statistics are in 1426, AS.
72. Com¡n, "Entreguerras," p. 116; Jes£s Sanz, "La agricultura espa¤ola durante el primer tercio del siglo XX: Un sector en transformaci¢n," in La econom¡a espa¤ola en el siglo XX, ed. Jordi Nadal et al. (Barcelona, 1987), pp. 248-50; cf. Proyecto de ley de protecci¢n a la industria nacional de productos nitrogenados sint"šticos, 320, AS.
73. Francesc Roca, "La 'gross Barcelona': Dues introduccions," Recerques: Ideologia i creixement industrial, no. 6 (1976): 123.
74. Estad¡sticas b sicas de Espa¤a, 1900-1970 (Madrid, 1975); Annuaire, 1934, pp. 425-26. 75. Industria catalana (March 1933).
76. Pierre Vilar, Historia de Espa¤a, trans. Manuel Tu¤¢n de Lara and Jes£s Suso Sola (Barcelona, 1978), p. 121.
2. Anarchosyndicalist Ideology
The weakness of the Catalan bourgeoisie and the consequent economic and social situation in Barcelona favored the growth and tenacity of anarchosyndicalism. Analyses of this ideology-which I broadly define as including those anarchists who believed that the union would be the basis of the future society, those anarchists who merely accepted the sindicato as one organization among several that would participate in the revolution, and also revolutionary syndicalists, most of whom were influenced by anarchist theoreticians-have often been clouded by misunderstandings and polemics.1 Some historians have concentrated on its antistatism and have thereby overemphasized its utopianism or millenarianism.2 One has underlined anarchosyndicalism's intense "hostility to industrial life," its hatred of the "constraints of organization," and its "hatred for the present": "Syndicalism could be a roaring success where, as in Catalonia, ex-peasants, already aggrieved by rural hardship and injustice, were newly exposed to industry and looked to an idealized past."3 Not only academics but also revolutionary Marxists have used this sociological explanation to characterize anarchosyndicalism in Catalonia:
The Andalusian peasant has given our anarchist movement its spiritual constitution. The simplicity of the village vision has dominated it totally. For our anarchists, the only problem to resolve is that of the prison and the Guardia civil.
This is the essential. The rest remains in a nebulous and incoherent state. . . . The Catalan proletariat, to whom history has given the critical responsibility of being the most important agent of the social transformation of Spain, has not been able to form its proletarian consciousness because of the constant peasant emigration from Spain to Catalonia.4 The sociological explanation, however, with its characterization of anarchosyndicalism as anti- industrial and backward-looking, deforms the nature of this ideology and misrepresents the actions of the Catalan workers. While some laborers from Andalusia were involved in violent incidents against the Guardia civil and foremen, others accepted work at wages below the union scale and acted as strikebreakers. In Barcelona during the 1930s, only approximately one-third of the workers were non- Catalans. Not all of these non-Catalans were peasants from Andalusia or elsewhere;5 many were experienced industrial workers from other urban areas of Spain. Other working classes-the French or the German, for example-were partially composed of former peasants, but their sociological composition cannot explain French anarchosyndicalism or, for that matter, the lack of anarchosyndicalism in Germany. Anarchosyndicalism had firm roots in Barcelona, not because of the supposed non-Catalan origins of Barcelonan workers nor because of its alleged anti-industrialism, but because it articulated the desires of an important minority of discontented workers who were frustrated by social, economic, and political conditions in their country and city. Thus it was not millenarianism that underlay anarchosyndicalism but, on the contrary, a rational reaction to the relative poverty and misery of Spanish workers. This rational response constituted both the strength and, as we shall see, the weakness of anarchosyndicalism.
In Spain in general and Barcelona in particular, salaries, health, and education were often below Western European norms. Just before World War I, Spain had the lowest salaries in Western Europe (Portugal excepted).6 A French consular observer noted that abnormally low salaries and tariff protection were the reasons for the survival of Catalan industry. Even though 65 percent of its budget was spent on food, a Barcelonan working-class family in the 1930s ate little meat or butter.7 Only marginal progress had been made since 1914. By comparison, in 1936 the family of an employed working-class Parisian spent 55 percent of its income on food (and that of an unemployed worker spent 64 pecent of its budget on food).
Sanitary conditions still left much to be desired, even though Spanish public health improved considerably during the first third of the century.8 Available, if incomplete, statistics show persistent differences between Spanish and French public health. In 1936, 109 per 1,000 Spanish children, compared to 72 per 1,000 in France, died before they reached their first birthday.9 In proportion to population, during the early 1930s Spain had twice as many deaths from bronchitis and pneumonia. In 1935 the mortality rate in Paris for these diseases was .89 per 1,000 compared to 2.58 per 1,000 in Barcelona. Deaths from scarlet fever and measles were proportionally almost four times higher in Spain. Again, in proportion to population, Barcelona reported twice as many deaths from measles as Paris. Much higher mortality caused by measles is characteristic, even today, of underdeveloped nations. In the early 1930s typhoid fever, which was linked to a contaminated water supply and poor hygiene, was almost four times more lethal in Spain than in France. In 1935 Barcelona declared 17 typhoid deaths per 100,000 inhabitants compared to 2 per 100,000 in Paris. Only cancer and tuberculosis were consistently more prevalent in France and in Paris. In 1930 a French woman could expect to live 59 years and a French man 55.9, but a Spanish woman only 53.8 years and a Spanish male 51. Spaniards had one of the lowest life expectancies in either Eastern or Western Europe.10 Accident and unemployment insurance were less available in Barcelona than in Paris during the 1930s. Jobless Spanish wage earners "were completely abandoned to their fate," particularly in light of the shortage of hospitals and lack of health insurance.11 In 1932 only 25,261 received unemployment benefits from the Caja nacional contra el paro forzoso. In France, with an active population approximately 2.6 times larger, 312,894 unemployed workers received some sort of state assistance in December 1933.12 With a national population not quite twice as large as the Spanish, French hospitals and hospices accommodated more than four times the number of patients.13 In 1933 Parisian hospitals and hospices admitted ten times more patients in a population three times larger than Barcelona's.
In December 1933 both the partial and complete unemployment in Spain totaled 618,947. Spanish joblessness during the Second Republic usually reflected structural, not momentary, economic difficulties, and many of the jobless were farm or construction workers. Unemployment increased throughout the 1930s in Spain in part because the possibilities of emigration, a safety valve for the poor of certain regions, were reduced. The more advanced nations, such as France, which were adversely affected by the depression, discouraged new immigration and encouraged foreigners to return home. The Spanish and Catalan economy had difficulty providing jobs for returning nationals. With numerically unimportant exceptions, education for workers was either lacking or controlled by the Catholic church until the advent of the Second Republic.14 The level of illiteracy in Spain and the number of priests per capita were among the highest in Western Europe, matched only by Portugal, the Balkan countries, and Latin America.15 Although the percentage of illiterates certainly declined in the first third of the twentieth century, absolute numbers of illiterates remained stable.16 A recent study has noted that in 1930 33 percent of the Spanish population was illiterate; another has stated 40 percent, and an older source estimates 45.46 percent.17 In 1930, 60 percent of Spanish children did not attend school.18 Even in 1934 the number of children of school age who were literate was hardly greater than the number who were not.
Guillermo Graell, the head of the Fomento, wrote in 1917 that 60 percent of the Spanish population could not read or write, although in Barcelona the percentage was 41 percent.19 In November 1922 the Fomento noted that "perhaps the majority" of workers was illiterate and therefore uninterested in printed documents.20 Estimates vary, but in the 1930s Barcelona had an illiteracy rate of at least 22.3 percent.21 In 1936 the percentage of children in Catalonia who did not attend school rose to 36 percent.22 A Catalan glassworker, Juan Peir¢, who was to become the CNT Minister of Industry in the government of Largo Caballero, learned how to read and write in a Barcelonan prison at age twenty- two.23 Prison seems to have been the university of many other anarchosyndicalist militants. Many working-class children were unable to attend classes because they had to work at an early age; others were discouraged by prohibitive costs, because the state gave little support to education. Spain spent 1.5 pesetas per year per inhabitant on education, whereas France spent what amounted to 5.6 pesetas, or almost four times as much.24 Spanish technical education was insufficient, with only 1,527 students in both state and Catholic technical schools in 1935. In contrast, France was training 40,000 technical students in 1940.
The higher illiteracy, lower health standards, and weak economy must be taken into account in any evaluation of revolutionary ideologies in Catalonia. In Barcelona, revolutionary ideology took the form of anarchosyndicalism and not of Marxism, which workers identified with "reformism," that is, participation in parliament and collaboration with the hated bourgeoisie. Before World War I a French observer noted the "moderation and restraint" of Spanish Socialists, who were Marxists, and remarked that their "leaders became collaborators in the work of practical reforms realized by the state."25 After the First World War, the Socialists and their union, UGT (Uni¢n general de trabajadores), continued to cooperate with the government; the dictator, Primo de Rivera, even appointed Largo Caballero, the head of the UGT, as state counselor. Largo Caballero used his position to strengthen the UGT while the CNT (Confederaci¢n nacional de trabajadores) was outlawed by the government. Within the Second Republic, Socialists occupied important ministries during the first bienio (1931-1933) and after the victory of the Popular Front. The anarchosyndicalists' rejection, in principle if not always in practice, of collaboration with state and bourgeoisie as well as their criticism of Socialist reformism should not be dismissed too quickly as irrational or illogical. As we have seen, the bourgeoisie in Spain and Barcelona was less frequently the progressive elite that it was in France. Cooperation with the Spanish state, which often responded with repression to social problems and workers' agitation, was clearly unpopular among militant sections of the proletariat.26 The neutrality of the state was, to say the least, questionable when, as has been shown, industrialists directly subsidized the low-paid Guardia civil. Therefore, anarchist and anarchosyndicalist strength among groups of Spanish and Barcelonan workers should not be seen as a result of the immaturity of workers or their nostalgia for a rural utopia but as a revolutionary response to a society where repression and direct recourse to military rule were frequent. Until recently, historians have stressed the antistatist character and the political thought of anarchosyndicalism and have therefore ignored its economic doctrines. Although many anarchosyndicalists wished to abolish the state or radically reduce its functions, they were not opposed to economic organization and coordination. In fact, they favored a strong union as the basis of both the revolution and the future society. If anarchosyndicalists desired democratic control of the factories by the workers themselves, they by no means opposed industry, science, or progress in general. Indeed, few were more fervent believers in progress and production than Spanish anarchosyndicalists; they criticized their bourgeoisie because of its inability to develop the productive forces.27 By glorifying labor as emancipatory, the dominant forms of anarchism and, later, anarchosyndicalism led not only to the acceptance of industrialization but also to its active promotion. In 1872 the regional conference of the First International in Zaragoza asked, "How can women be free?" and responded to its own question, "through nothing but work."28 In 1910 the founding congress of the anarchosyndicalist CNT again espoused the idea, which became common among many sectors of the Left, that women were to be liberated by labor. In the textile industry, where women often received half the wages of men, the Barcelonan union advocated equal pay for equal work and elimination of the double exploitation of women at home and at the workplace. The union, whose leadership was exclusively male in a branch where women composed the majority, believed that the "liberation (redenci¢n moral) of women, who are today subordinated to their husbands, must be brought about by work, which will make them equal to men."29
Anarchosyndicalism called on workers in their unions to take over the means of production and, just as important, to develop them. The French thinker Georges Sorel articulated certain ideas common to European and Spanish anarchosyndicalism. Although Sorelism in France was limited to small groups of intellectuals, it nevertheless expressed "certain tendencies of revolutionary syndicalism."30 Probably referring to CNT militants, a prominent Catalan industrialist asserted that "our workers are more likely to accept the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism of Sorel and Labriola." Sorel, who rejected what he considered the bourgeois notion of progress, nevertheless believed that true progress existed in the workshop and in production:
Revolutionary syndicalism is the greatest educational force that contemporary society has in order to prepare the work of the future. The free producer in a progressive workshop must never evaluate his own efforts by any external standard; he ought to consider the models given him as inferior and strive to surpass everything that has been done before. Thus, the constant improvement of the quantity and quality of production will always be assured; the idea of continual progress will be realized in a workshop of this kind.31
Sorel also criticized the French bourgeoisie for what he considered its failure to develop the productive forces, and he faithfully expressed the productivism that was common to both anarchosyndicalist intellectuals and militants. In 1906 in a speech before one hundred striking comrades, an anarchosyndicalist carpenter, L"šon Jamin of the French federation, CGT (or Conf"šd"šration g"šn"šrale du travail), attacked the "parasitism" of the bourgeoisie and defended modern methods of production:
I am a fervent supporter of machinery everywhere it can be used. . . . To install machines everywhere will make the final work of the social revolution easier. The only practical way to dispense with the middlemen, the employers, who are between the producers and consumers, is first to participate in your union in order to be able, later, without striking a blow, to take over the means of modern production.32
The CGT carpenter concluded that exploitation would not cease until the union realized "scientific organization at work."
Jamin was not the only French anarchosyndicalist to endorse scientific organization at work. Even such a harsh critic of Taylorism as Emile Pouget, a CGT leader, approved the principle of scientific organization of the factory. What Pouget objected to in his pamphlet, L' organisation du surmenage: Le systÅ me Taylor, was Taylor's pseudoscientific method, which exhausted workers both physically and mentally. According to the CGT leader, in Taylor's system "at all times the scientific point of view, the rational organization of work becomes . . . secondary, and the primary objective is . . . to force workers to overwork."33 Pouget uncritically approved the system of two American pioneers of scientific organization of work, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, who, according to the French anarchosyndicalist, wanted only to make work easier and more efficient through the elimination of "useless" movements and the "simplification" of the work process.34 According to one historian of work organization, the Gilbreths had studied the causes of workers' motivation and sought ways to reduce workers' fatigue.35 They were in the avant-garde of the movement to wed industrial psychology to scientific management and to secure the "consent" and "contentment" of workers. In addition, the Gilbreths, unlike Taylor, accepted labor unions. Pouget was able to admire the Gilbreths' work since he shared with them a faith in the ability of the scientific organization of labor to bring about, under the proper circumstances, progress in production and the reconciliation of workers to their jobs. Whereas in France anarchosyndicalism gradually faded in the first two decades of the twentieth century, in Spain anarchosyndicalism grew even after World War I. During the war the Catalan bourgeoisie refused to break its alliance with conservative and traditionalist politicians, and the attempt to make a democratic revolution and establish a republic in 1917 failed miserably. In addition, wartime inflation and the immediate postwar economic crisis fueled working-class discontent throughout Spain, particularly in Barcelona, where violent strikes brought brutal state repression. An atmosphere of class hatred reigned in the Catalan capital, and syndicalist terrorism battled counterterrorism by the state and employers, resulting in 809 major felonies (delitos sociales) between 1917 and 1922.36 Revolving around the CNT, the anarchosyndicalist movement grew in response to the climate of violence and economic crisis, and of disappointment after the failed revolution of 1917. Within the working-class movement, those anarchists who believed that the union would be the basis of the future society of libertarian communism gained ground over other anarchists who held a more individualist position or who considered that the building blocks of the new society would be the municipalities or the communes of the countryside.37 The anarchosyndicalists regarded the union- which, of course, totally depended on the existence of the workplace and wage labor itself-as the organizational foundation of libertarian communism. Their attitude reflected the growing acceptance of industrialization among libertarian militants, although, it should be noted, historians have often exaggerated the anarchists' hostility to the machine age.
Diego Abad de Santill n, a leader and theoretician who later represented the CNT in the Generalitat during the Revolution, exemplified the shifts in Spanish anarchosyndicalist ideology. Santill n had favored the rural municipality and opposed the domination of the sindicato (union) in the anarchist movement but became one of the most ardent defenders of the sindicato as the basis for the revolution. He also shifted from being a zealous critic of capitalist technology and organization of work to being their enthusiastic supporter. In 1931 he could write, "Modern industrialism, in the manner of Ford, is pure fascism, legitimate despotism. In the great rationalized factories the individual is nothing, the machine is everything. Those of us who love freedom are not only enemies of statist fascism but also of economic fascism."38 Yet two years later, in 1933, Santill n described modern industry as a source of pride for the human race since it had led to the domination of nature. He noted approvingly that Taylorization had eliminated the "unproductive movements of the individual" and had increased "his productivity":
It is not necessary to destroy the present technical organization of capitalist society, but we must make use of it.
The Revolution will end private ownership of the factory, but if the factory must exist and, in our opinion, improve, it is necessary to know how it operates. The fact that it becomes social property does not change the essence of production or the method of production. The distribution of production will change and become more equitable.
Santill n's abrupt shift was perhaps induced by the Depression, which led many militants, including some who were more anarchist than syndicalist, to conclude that the fall of capitalism was inevitable and that they must be able to manage the economic transition to libertarian communism.39 Like many other libertarian militants, the CNT leader underlined the necessity of eliminating "parasitism" and of providing work for all. Work would be both a right and a duty in revolutionary society, and he approved the old saying, Those who do not work, do not eat: In the factory we are not seeking friendship. . . . In the factory what interests us above all is that our fellow worker knows his job and does it without complications because of his inexperience or ignorance of the functioning of the whole.
Salvation is in work, and the day will come when workers want it [salvation]. The anarchists, the only tendency which does not seek to live at the expense of others, fight for that day. He made it clear that in libertarian communism the producer would replace the citizen. Santill n, a member of the radical Federaci¢n anarquista ib"šrica (FAI), which often controlled key positions within the CNT, was not alone in his support of work, modern technology, and the union as the seeds of the new society. More moderate and more reformist members of the CNT also advocated most of the fa¡sta's goals. Angel Pesta¤a, a leader of the trentistas (the anti-fa¡sta moderates of the CNT), called for a reorganization by the union to improve both production and consumption.40 Mar¡n Civera, who attempted to synthesize Marxism and anarchosyndicalism in his review, Orto, confirmed that sindicalismo "revered technology, welcomed it with jubilation and cherished it as the greatest part of its dream."41 Civera, whose journal published contributions from many prominent CNT leaders, favored big unions to compete with capitalist trusts. For Juan L¢pez, another CNT moderate, the union should take control of production from the employers and impose "order and moral discipline" on the shop floor.42 According to L¢pez, the unions would intensify production and surpass the technical level of capitalism. Technical commissions would run each industry, in accordance with the popular will.
Even venerable CNT members like Issac Puente, who down- graded the importance of the union in favor of the municipality or the commune, nevertheless stressed their faith in technological progress and production. For these rural-oriented anarchists, everyone had the obligation to produce: "All citizens will become equal in the single category of producers."43 Another militant who was close to Puente asserted that "life would be so beautiful if everyone worked" so that eventually the "producers" could labor less.44 Like the anarchosyndicalists, these anarchists asserted that in the revolution the "identity card of the producer," issued by the union, would be necessary to obtain any rights at all. Their goal was to eliminate "parasites," "idlers," and "good-for-nothings." In May 1936, several months before the outbreak of war and revolution, the CNT celebrated its congress at Zaragoza where it recognized the "producer" as the basic unit of libertarian communism.45 Foreign anarchosyndicalists, who were influential within the CNT, also emphasized the virtues of work, technology, and industrial democracy. Christian Cornelissen, the Dutch anarchosyndicalist whose Libertarian Communism and the Transitional Regime was translated into Spanish in 1936, pleaded for a libertarian communism that would be "modern" and represent "technical progress."46 He feared that if anarchosyndicalists were not "progressive" and did not ally with technicians and scientists, they would fail as others had in the Russian Revolution and the Italian factory occupations. Unlike many anarchosyndicalists who believed that the state would be replaced by the union and economic coordinating councils, Cornelissen admitted that the state would not completely disappear in the future society but would be organized democratically, "from the bottom up." Although Cornelissen accepted the domination of smaller enterprises in certain sectors, he also attacked numerous comrades who criticized big industry. He favored the extension of the Spanish road network and the use of automobiles to integrate more fully the regions of the peninsula.47
The works of Pierre Besnard, secretary of the Anarchist International and head of the French anarchosyndicalist union in the 1930s, exerted a "great influence" over the CNT leadership.48 Besnard argued that "the period of revolutionary romanticism was over" and that a "constructive plan" of revolution must be elaborated.49 He termed "labor, technology, and science" the "constructive forces of the revolution"; the future society, from which the state and "all authority" would be completely eliminated, would be based on "the producer or worker" (italics in original). "The union," whose "character was biological," constituted the "natural grouping of producers and workers." "Technical sections" under union control would study the best ways to increase workers' output while diminishing their workweek and fatigue. A "work card" containing the number of hours they worked would permit their consumption of goods, which the commune would largely organize. Consumption, which Besnard claimed was not as "creative" as production, would also be rationalized; for example, bakeries that used the "most modern techniques" would produce "on a great scale" to avoid long queues that wasted a "great deal of worktime." In other services, the revolution would turn "ill- tempered and peevish" employees into "lively and conscientious" workers. According to Besnard, the commune would also take charge of education, to follow the plan sketched in 1876 by the anarchist, James Guillaume. A follower of Bakunin, Guillaume envisaged a perpetual work study program that would begin in childhood and continue through adulthood: At the same time that the child develops his body and acquires knowledge, he will learn how to be a producer. . . . As a young man of sixteen or seventeen . . . he will have learned a skill and therefore will join the ranks of useful producers so that he can work to pay back society for having educated him.50
Foreshadowing the Maoist period in China, professors would double "as producers who perform manual labor." Although Besnard envisaged the long-term possibility of liberating producers from the "servitude of work," the immediate goal of his social revolution was "to organize production" to allow all "to live and work freely."
Gaston Leval, another French anarchosyndicalist who was influential in both the CNT and the FAI, wanted the economy of the future society to be organized with the consent of the masses but believed that technicians should have important "regulating functions":51 "Anarchism has always envisaged the functional organization of economic activities. . . . Industry must be directed, administered, and guided by industrial workers and their technicians."52 For Leval, the fundamental link among human beings was work.53 He wanted to promote total interdependence and economic unity among regions and criticized "the absurdity of regional patriotism."54 It is interesting to note that Leval, Besnard, and Cornelissen were much more influential in the Spanish working-class movement than in their native countries, where anarchosyndicalism continued to die slowly.
The revolutionary productivism of Spanish anarchosyndicalists was probably reinforced by the relatively backward state of Spanish industry and agriculture. Their fervent anticlericalism may likewise have become more deeply rooted in reaction to the upper classes' strong links to the Church. For many workers, only a revolution could eliminate the "parasitic" Church, whose priests were exempted from military service and, they claimed, from productive labor. Anarchosyndicalists linked the Church to an economy controlled by "rentiers, hoarders, speculators, and dealers," an economy that favored mediocrity and persecuted intelligence.55 According to one CNT leader, "the lack of culture and the destitution of the Iberian people" were "rooted in the Church."56 The CNT even blamed the "meanness" (mezquinidad) of its class enemy on the Church's influence. A libertarian historian of Portuguese origins viewed the Inquisition as the "defeat of the worker by the warrior, the builder by the destroyer." Many rank-and-file workers shared the anarchosyndicalist militants' intense dislike of the Church; one right-wing Frenchman observed a marked anticlericalism and dechristianization among workers in Barcelona when he visited that city before World War I.57 To break Catholic control of education and to end illiteracy, anarchists and anarchosyndicalists demanded that escuelas racionalistas be initiated by unions and workers' organizations. Spanish anarchosyndicalists picked up the banner of science and progress, which, they thought, most of their bourgeoisie had dropped. Anselmo Lorenzo, a prominent anarchist militant, denounced the bourgeoisie for turning its back on progress and praised the rationalist "Modern School" for teaching the laws of evolution and for freeing education from "mysticism, metaphysics, and legend."58 Libertarians attempted to provide a secular, positivist education for the illiterate urban masses.59 Diego Abad de Santill n's Economic Organism of the Revolution provided one of the most influential outlines of anarchosyndicalist plans for modernization. The book, which first appeared in March 1936, a few months before the outbreak of the civil war, was republished twice during the conflict and prefigured many of the industrial programs of the CNT during the Revolution. Santill n began his essay with a critique of capitalism, which he believed had failed to dominate nature effectively: "Capitalism does not even exploit [natural] resources. Everywhere we observe uncultivated land, unutilized waterfalls, and natural resources that are uselessly lost."60 In addition, capitalism was unable to extract the highest output (rendimiento) from its workers. Because Spanish capitalists had not exploited the natural resources of the country, foreign businessmen had colonized the nation. Without demanding appropriate concessions, the government had permitted the foreigners to become the "absolute masters" of the peninsula. The CNT leader lamented that the tendency to live without work had been present throughout Spanish history, and he argued that the number of Spanish workers- three to four million-should be doubled. Leisure, laziness, and parasitism were degrading and must be eliminated. Other libertarian militants attacked the Spanish state precisely because, in their view, it encouraged this parasitism.
According to Santill n, Spain had to accomplish in several years what capitalism had not achieved in decades; the anarchosyndicalist militant called for national self-sufficiency in oil, cotton, and other raw materials. Agriculture should become specialized and modernized as in England, Holland, and France. Santill n wanted an ambitious program of industrialization. Railroads, highways, and dams were to be built, and Spain needed a potent automobile industry (perhaps on the American model): Not so many years ago the automobile was a rarity. . . . Today it is almost a proletarian vehicle, common in our culture, and it must be within the reach of all, absolutely all, the inhabitants of a country. . . . We prefer the Ford factory in which speculation is ended, the health of the personnel is maintained, and salaries are increased. The result is better than a minuscule firm in Barcelona.
Not only anarchosyndicalist leaders and theorists, such as Santill n, Leval, Cornelissen, and Pesta¤a, recognized Spanish industrial backwardness, but local CNT militants lamented the failures of the Barcelonan bourgeoisie and wanted to take steps to rationalize and modernize their industries. The Barcelonan Metallurgical Union accused the bourgeoisie of maintaining "a series of useless and superfluous industries."61 In the inaugural issues of the monthly journal of the Catalan Federation of Metallurgy, CNT militants deplored the lack of "progress" in the factory and underlined "the misery, the lack of light, of hygiene, the same outdated tools, poor organization and imperfection of work because of the ineptness and poverty of the Spanish metallurgical bourgeoisie, which was always lagging behind the bourgeoisie of other nations."62 In particular, the Barcelonan militants criticized the inability of the Spanish industrial elite to mass-produce cars, and they dreamed of the "hot" Spanish car of the revolutionary future: "The cute little car (cochecito) will be constructed . . . to shelter two lovebirds. Its construction will take into account the most modern advances, . . . lightning rods, aviation equipment, swimming equipment, radio, fire alarms and extinguishers." The sailors of the CNT rebelled against the decadence of the Spanish merchant marine. According to the militants, Spain had never acquired a modern fleet because of greedy politicians, corrupt bureaucrats, and visionless shipowners who purchased "old 'junks' from the flea markets of foreign countries . . . receiving big allowances from the state for services totally foreign to any national interest."63 Similarly, shipbuilders had never really been interested in producing but in living off governmental subsidies and political influence. Thus the Spanish merchant marine was filled with vessels that other nations had discarded after World War I. In sum, "our fleet means economic ruin for the state, a moral and material torture for the workers, and a shame for the Spanish people, while the shipowning vultures get rich on governmental subsidies for navigation, construction, and reparation."64 According to the militants, Spanish shipping was therefore subjected to "humiliating control" by foreigners who managed two-thirds to three-quarters of commercial traffic from 1900 to 1936.
CNT construction workers also criticized the bourgeoisie for lacking initiative, and they charged that its incessant speculation and its failure to construct new housing had boosted rents for many Barcelonan workers with scant resources.65 To remedy the "old Spanish vice of laziness," the construction militants proposed the building of new lodgings that would provide fresh air, light, and space for many who were trapped in unhealthy, dark, smelly, and overly dense apartments in the middle of the city. CNT militants were highly influenced by the urbanism of Le Corbusier, the Swiss architect whose ideas for a city of large apartment houses and for improved automobile circulation were quite popular in the anarchosyndicalist union. Thus, the CNT desired to build a modern and "progressive" city, one they asserted the Barcelonan bourgeoisie had never been willing or able to construct.66
Like their colleagues in construction and metallurgy, the militants of other major industries-textiles, chemicals, and electricity-decried the backwardness of Barcelonan industries and called for concentration of small workshops and factories, modernization of old plants and equipment, standardization of parts and products, and rationalization to reduce labor costs and increase production. In the textile industry, CNT militants wanted to concentrate small firms and standardize production in order to reduce the number of articles manufactured.67 Collectivization, that is, workers' control, would decrease needless competition, improve quality, and augment needed exports. It should be noted that the CNT was not alone in its desire to rationalize industries in textiles and other sectors. The POUM (Partido obrero de unificaci¢n marxista), a revolutionary Marxist party, also demanded "concentration," "modernization," and "rationalization," and it criticized the Catalan bourgeoisie for wasting the windfall profits of World War I. The workers must do what the bourgeoisie had failed to accomplish, said the poumistas, who asserted that "the unions and the factory are the best schools in theoretical and practical education of the working class for the realization of socialism."68 The UGT, a minority union in Catalonia that was close to the Catalan Communist party (PSUC, or Partit socialista unificat de Catalunya), called too for the rationalization and standardization of industry. Communists criticized the dominance of "foreign capital" in the "most important and thriving sectors" and wanted to construct an "independent" and "national" economy.69 Activists of working-class organizations demanded the establishment of technical schools. CNT and UGT militants desired the creation of educational institutions to produce technicians for a large public-works program. Militant sailors attacked the lack of educational opportunities in Spain and declared that the schools established by employers were insufficient and obsolete. The majority of sailors remained illiterate, and activists complained that, unlike English seamen, Spaniards were not able to receive training in order to advance through the ranks and that only officers' sons could become officers.70 Thus, in addition to the accusations that the Barcelonan bourgeoisie had not developed the means of production, anarchosyndicalist militants charged that it had proved incapable of opening careers to talent and ability.
Furthermore, bourgeois weakness permitted foreign domination of large sectors of Catalan industry. Like their leaders, rank-and-file activists of both the CNT and UGT resented and resisted foreign control of their industries. Militants in metallurgy criticized the Spanish bourgeoisie for its subordination to English, American, and German automakers.71 Fully aware of the poverty of the national aviation industry, the CNT Metallurgical Union wanted to "create a powerful air force, capable of assuring national independence at all times."72 The Confederaci¢n deplored the minimal development of the chemical industry; the UGT Catalan Chemical Union complained that the bourgeoisie had left this sector in an "embryonic state."73 Both the CNT and UGT noted the advanced state of foreign chemical firms and stressed the need for economic liberation of domestic industry from the foreigner.74 During the early years of the Second Republic, the Sindicato nacional de tel"šfonos charged that the government favored "American interests instead of those of our nation."75 CNT telephone workers protested the government's jailing of "honorable comrades" by "gunmen in the pay of Wall Street." CNT sailors declared plaintively that even the maps of the Spanish coast were English, although the activists concluded that English maps were not necessarily a handicap since if navigators used Spanish maps, "the ships would end up on the rocks."76 The militants of the electricity and gas industries were particularly sensitive to foreign control, which, as we have seen, prevailed in this branch of the Catalan economy. The CNT Federation of Water, Gas, and Electrical Workers lamented the "bleeding" (sangr¡a) of the economy caused by the imports of electrical equipment and called for an effort to manufacture the material in Catalonia.77 An account of one of the most important strikes in Spanish history, mounted in 1919 against the Barcelonan power company significantly labeled "La Canadiense," showed how CNT militants fought foreign control of electricity. The article appeared in a CNT publication in 1937.78 It remarked that foreigners had developed Spain because the indigenous bourgeoisie was too lazy and aristocratic; the English who managed the company were arrogant and treated the Spanish as inferior. In 1919 when the power company dismissed seven workers, blue-collar workers joined white-collar workers in a strike. Instead of meeting the demands of the workers, the government and the Barcelonan bourgeoisie responded with repression; the strikers replied by sabotaging power lines and transformers.79 A general strike ensued, and it again met repression by government and employers. The official response to this strike contributed to the climate of terrorism and counterterrorism that reigned in Barcelona until the pronunciamiento of Primo de Rivera in 1923.
Confronting what they considered to be a shortsighted and visionless class of employers, Spanish anarchosyndicalists adopted many of the goals that the bourgeoisie in more advanced countries such as France had already accomplished. Thus, anarchosyndicalists desired to develop Spain's productive forces to create national self-sufficiency and a more prosperous national market. This economic nationalism of Spanish anarchosyndicalism has been obscured by the nationalist ideology of the Spanish Right and by its own ideology of "proletarian internationalism." Yet, as we have seen, both anarchosyndicalist leaders and militants demanded the end of foreign industrial domination and the strengthening of Spanish, not international or regional, control of the means of production. The anarchosyndicalist ideology of economic development included a democratic political philosophy extended to the workplace. The means of production were to be developed with the consent-and control-of the workers themselves. This extension of democracy to production and faith in the union as the agent of revolution distinguished anarchosyndicalist ideology from some forms of Marxism, particularly bolshevism, which stressed the priority of the party. Anarchosyndicalists wanted what is now known as autogestion, or workers' control in the factory. The great majority of anarchosyndicalist theorists posited worker-elected democratic councils, to be coordinated by the unions, as the decision-making bodies of the revolution. According to Santill n, power would be exercised by the workers themselves, who could revoke the council at all times. Local and regional councils would be coordinated by the Federal Council of the Economy; it would plan and direct industry and agriculture in accordance with instructions from below.80 Issac Puente proclaimed, "Technicians and workers united in assemblies will decide the internal regime of a factory, and the federation of unions will have control of production."81
Anarchosyndicalist theorists never explored in depth a potential conflict between the democratic form of the councils and the content of the program for economic rationalization and industrialization. Faced with a choice between workers' participation in production and efficiency in production, some libertarians did hint at their response: "Libertarian socialism has never refused the right to resist those who can harm collective life."82 Anarchosyndicalists would be justified in punishing an individual "who, because of ill will or another motive, would not want to yield to the previously agreed-upon discipline."
According to the French anarchosyndicalist Pierre Besnard, special clinics and schools would care for morally and physically "abnormal" individuals and reeducate them to participate in everyday life.83 Santill n noted that "in a regime of organized work it is very difficult to live outside of production"; Leval warned that a "parasite" could obtain "nothing" during the Revolution.84 Even though Pesta¤a advocated industrial decentralization, he too wanted "work identity cards" to control slackers. Juan Peir¢-who, with Pesta¤a, was a leader of the trentistas-complained that Spain was a "semicolonial country" whose people might need a good dose of repression to make the revolution succeed.85 Another militant asserted that a libertarian communist society would not use force on those who did not wish to labor but would instead treat them as mentally unbalanced and allow them to wander about as long as they did not disturb social peace. One visionary advocated, when money was abolished, that "vagrants" be required to have their identity cards stamped by a union official to ensure that they could not avoid work. The 1936 CNT Congress of Zaragoza, which reunited moderate trentistas and more extremist fa¡stas, proposed popular assemblies to discipline those who "do not fulfill their duties either in the moral order or in their functions as producers."86 The libertarian communist revolution had an obligation:
[to] seek from every human being his maximum contribution in accordance with the necessities of society. . . . All useful men will be ready to fulfill their duty-which will be transformed into a true right when man works freely-by collaborating in the collective.87 The prewar CNT congress demanded not merely sacrifices but also "willing cooperation in the social reconstructive work that everyone will carry out unanimously."
The question of what would happen, however, if the workers themselves resisted the anarchosyndicalist desire for modernization remained unanswered. Would leaders and militants opt for democracy or production? Before we can understand how they handled this problem, we need to examine the relation between the CNT and Barcelonan workers.
Notes
1. For fine distinctions among these categories, see Gaston Leval, Precisiones sobre el anarquismo (Barcelona, 1937).
2. See Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth (Cambridge, 1964). See also Gerald Meaker, The Revolutionary Left in Spain, 1914-1923 (Stanford, 1974).
3. Peter N. Stearns, Revolutionary Syndicalism and French Labor: A Cause without Rebels (New Brunswick, N.J., 1971), pp. 10, 105.
4. Joaqu¡n Maur¡n, La revoluci¢n espa¤ola (Barcelona, 1977), p. 154.
5. Alberto Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social en Catalu¤a de 1930 a 1936 (Barcelona, 1971), p. 18, would put the figure at 37 percent. My own random sample from AS indicates that less than one-third of Barcelonan workers were non-Catalans. In 1930, 37.14 percent of the Barcelonan population was born outside of Catalonia. See A. Cabre and I. Pujades, "La poblaci¢ de Barcelona i del seu entorn al segle XX," L'Aven"¡, no. 88 (December 1985), p. 35.
6. Stanley Payne, Falange (Stanford, 1967), p. 2; "Direction des affaires politiques et commerciales," 3 January 1934, AD.
7. Henri Paechter, Espagne, 1936-1937 (Paris, 1986), p. 85; Pierre Conard and Albert Lovett, "ProblÅ mes de l'"švaluation du co-t de vie en Espagne: Le prix du pain depuis le milieu du XIX siÅ cle, une source nouvelle," M"šlanges de la casa de Vel squez 5 (1969): 419; Gabrielle Letellier, Jean Perret, H. E. Zuber, and A. Dauphin-Meunier, Enquˆte sur le ch"mage (Paris, 1938-1949), 3:35.
8. Joaqu¡n Arango, "La modernizaci¢n demogr fica de la sociedad espa¤ola," in La econom¡a espa¤ola en el siglo XX, ed. Jordi Nadal et al. (Barcelona, 1987), p. 209.
9. Figures from B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 1750-1970 (New York, 1975), p. 20; Paris and Barcelona comparisons are based on the Gaseta municipal de Barcelona, 1935 and Annuaire statistique de la ville de Paris, 1935-1937.
10. C"šcile Tardieu-Gotchac, "Les fl"šaux sociaux," in Histoire "šconomique de la France entre les deux guerres, ed. Alfred Sauvy (Paris, 1972), 3:290.
11. Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social, p. 70.
12. Anuario estad¡stico de Espa¤a, 1934, pp. 782, 982.
13. Ibid., pp. 802-6; Annuaire de Paris, 1934, p. 62. These figures are approximations and exclude first- aid stations.
14. Julio Ruiz Berrio and Angeles Galino, "L'"šducation en Espagne," in Histoire mondiale de l'"šducation, ed. Gaston Mialaret and Jean Vial (Paris, 1981), 3:205.
15. Ram¢n Tamames, La rep£blica, la era de Franco (Madrid, 1980), p. 132; R. Aubert, M. D. Knowles, and L. J. Rogier, eds., L'Eglise dans le monde moderne (Paris, 1975), 5:110.
16. Ruiz Berrio and Galino, "L'"šducation," p. 202.
17. John M. McNair, Education for a Changing Spain (Manchester, 1984), p. 26; Tamames, La rep£blica, p. 66; Harry Gannes and Theodore Repard, Spain in Revolt (London, 1936), p. 228. 18. Ram¢n Saf¢n, La educaci¢n en la Espa¤a revolucionaria (1936-1939), trans. Mar¡a Luisa Delgado and F"šlix Ortega (Madrid, 1978), p. 30.
19. Guillermo Graell, Programa econ¢mico, social y pol¡tico para despu"šs de la guerra (Barcelona, 1917), p. 227. 20. Fomento de trabajo nacional, Actas de la junta directiva, 24 November 1922. 21. Javier Tusell G¢mez, Las elecciones del frente popular en Espa¤a (Madrid, 1971), 2:210. 22. Figures from Saf¢n, Educaci¢n, pp. 82-84.
23. Juan Peir¢, Trayectoria de la CNT (Madrid, 1979), p. 11; see Le¢n Ignacio, "El Pistolerisme dels anys vint," L'Aven"¡, no. 52 (September 1982), which claims that the CNT leader learned to read at age sixteen.
24. McNair, Education, p. 25; Estad¡sticas b sicas, pp. 430-31; Joseph N. Moody, French Education since Napoleon (Syracuse, N.Y., 1978), p. 142. See also La industria el"šctrica (March 1936).
25. Angel Marvaud, La question sociale en Espagne (Paris, 1910), p. 413.
26. Xavier Cuadrat, Socialismo y anarquismo en Catalu¤a (1899-1911: los or¡genes de la CNT) (Madrid, 1976), p. 56.
27. For anarchist faith in progress, see Jos"š Alvarez Junco, La ideolog¡a pol¡tica del anarquismo espa¤ol, 1868-1919 (Madrid, 1976), p. 75.
28. Cited in Mary Nash, Mujer, familia y trabajo en Espa¤a, 1875-1936 (Barcelona, 1983), p. 300. 29. Cited in Alberto Balcells, Trabajo industrial y organizaci¢n obrera en la Catalu¤a contempor nea (1900- 1936) (Barcelona, 1974), p. 14.
30. Georges Lefranc, Le mouvement syndical sous la TroisiÅ me R"špublique (Paris, 1967), p. 163. 31. Georges Sorel, R"šflexions sur la violence (Paris, 1972), p. 320; on Sorel's influence in Spain, see E. Giralt i Raventos, ed., Bibliografia dels moviments socials a Catalunya, pa¡s Valenci... i les illes (Barcelona, 1972).
32. L"šon Jamin, La lutte pour les 8 heures (Paris, 1906), pp. 28-41.
33. E. Pouget, L'organisation du surmenage: Le systÅ me Taylor (Paris, 1914), p. 55.
34. Ibid., pp. 20-21, 45.
35. David F. Noble, America by Design (New York, 1977), p. 275.
36. Angel Pesta¤a, Terrorismo en Barcelona, ed. Xavier Tusell and Genoveva Garc¡a Queipo de Llana (Barcelona, 1979), p. 67.
37. Antonio Elorza, La utop¡a anarquista bajo la Segunda Rep£blica espa¤ola (Madrid, 1973), pp. 391-468. 38. Diego Abad de Santill n, El anarquismo y la revoluci¢n en Espa¤a: escritos 1930-1938, ed. Antonio Elorza (Madrid, 1976), pp. 280-96. The following paragraphs are based on this text. 39. Xavier Paniagua, La sociedad libertaria: Agrarismo e industrializaci¢n en el anarquismo espa¤ol, 1930-1939 (Barcelona, 1982), p. 254; Issac Puente, La finalidad de la CNT: El comunismo libertario (Barcelona, 1936); Walther L. Bernecker, Colectividades y revoluci¢n social: El anarquismo en la guerra civil espa¤ola, 1936-1939, trans. Gustau Mu¤oz (Barcelona, 1982), p. 83.
40. Angel Pesta¤a, Normas org nicas (Barcelona, 1930), p. 18.
41. Civera quoted in Paniagua, Sociedad, p. 187.
42. Juan L¢pez, C¢mo organizar el sindicato a la sociedad (Barcelona, n.d.), p. 5. 43. Puente, Finalidad, p. 15.
44. Ram¢n Segarra Vaqu"š, Qu"š es el comunismo libertario (Madrid, n.d.), p. 10.
45. CNT, El congreso confederal de Zaragoza, 1936 (Madrid, 1978), pp. 231-33. The congress guaranteed limited autonomy for communes that rejected industrialization or adopted nudism.
46. Christian Cornelissen, El comunismo libertario y el r"šgimen de transici¢n, trans. Eloy Mu¤iz (Valencia, 1936).
47. Cornelissen cited in Paniagua, Sociedad, p. 143.
48. Bernecker, Colectividades, p. 86.
49. The following is derived from Pierre Besnard, Le monde nouveau: Organisation d'une soci"št"š anarchiste (Paris [reprint, 1934]), p. 10.
50. Guillaume quoted in Besnard, Monde, p. 70.
51. Gaston Leval [Pedro R. Piller, pseud.], Problemas econ¢micos de la revoluci¢n social espa¤ola (Rosario de Santa Fe, 1932), p. 28.
52. Gaston Leval, Nuestro programa de reconstrucci¢n (Barcelona [1937?]), p. 12.
53. Leval, Problemas econ¢micos, p. 16.
54. Leval quoted in Paniagua, Sociedad, p. 206. See also Leval's discussion in Precisiones, p. 221.
55. Solidaridad Obrera, 8 January 1937. On workers' resentment of priests who were exempted from military service, see Jacques Valdour, L'ouvrier espagnol: Observations v"šcues (Paris, 1919), 1:284.
56. Juan Peir¢, Problemas y cintarazos (Rennes, 1946), p. 143; Gonzalo de Reparaz, La tragedia ib"šrica (Barcelona, n.d.), p. 113; See also Jos"š Alvarez Junco, "El anticlericalismo en el movimiento obrero," in Octubre 1934 (Madrid, 1985), pp. 283-300.
57. Valdour, L'ouvrier espagnol, 1:208, 328-31.
58. Anselmo Lorenzo, Contra la ignorancia (Barcelona, 1913), p. 13.
59. Pere Sol... Gusi¤er, "La escuela y la educaci¢n en los medios anarquistas de Catalu¤a, 1909-1939," Convivium 44-45 (1975): 52.
60. Diego Abad de Santill n, El organismo econ¢mico de la revoluci¢n: C¢mo vivimos y c¢mo podr¡amos vivir en Espa¤a (Barcelona, 1938). For similar critiques by libertarian militants, Gonzalo de Reparaz, [hijo], Pobreza y atraso de Espa¤a (Valencia, 1932) and Ricardo Sanz, El sindicalismo y la pol¡tica: Los solidarios y nosostros (Toulouse, 1966), p. 38.
61. Sindicato de la industria siderometal£rgica de Barcelona, ¨Colectivizaci¢n? ¨Nacionalizaci¢n? No socializaci¢n (Barcelona, 1937), p. 13.
62. This quotation and the following come from Sidero-Metalurgia, July and August 1937.
63. CNT Mar¡tima, 13 May 1937.
64. Ibid., 23 October 1937.
65. Hoy, December 1937 and January 1938 (Hoy was a CNT building workers' review).
66. See Alfonso Mart¡nez Rizo, La urban¡stica del porvenir (Valencia, 1932), which would reduce the congestion of overly large cities and avoid skyscrapers; in practice the CNT rejected this libertarian militant's different "rational urbanism," as it did decentralization.
67. Bolet¡n del Sindicato de la industria fabril y textil de Badalona y su radio, February 1937 (Badalona was an industrial suburb of Barcelona).
68. ConferÅ ncia de la ind£stria tÅ xtil del POUM (Barcelona, 1937), pp. 11-13.
69. Federico Melchor, El frente de la producci¢n: Una industria grande y fuerte para ganar la guerra (Valencia? 1937?), pp. 6, 12.
70. CNT Mar¡tima, 11 September 1937; 18 December 1937.
71. Horizontes, 1 February 1937.
72. Aeron utica, May-June 1938.
73. Solidaridad Obrera, 3 March 1938; Butllet¡ de la Federaci¢ catalana d'ind£stries qu¡miques-UGT, November 1937, p. 22.
74. S¡ntesis, October 1938.
75. Telegrams, 9 and 13 July 1931, Leg. 7A, no. 1, AHN.
76. CNT Mar¡tima, 16 January 1938.
77. Luz y fuerza, April 1937.
78. Ibid., February 1937.
79. See also Francisco Madrid, Ocho meses y un d¡a en el gobierno civil de Barcelona: Confesiones y testimonios (Barcelona, 1932), p. 14; Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years, 1868-1936 (New York, 1978), pp. 177-78; Juan G¢mez Casas, Historia del anarcosindicalismo espa¤ol (Madrid, 1973), p. 115; C"šsar M. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles y el poder, 1868-1969 (Paris, 1972), p. 34; Sanz, Sindicalismo, pp. 34-35.
80. Abad de Santill n, El organismo econ¢mico, p. 180; Elorza, La utop¡a anarquista, p. 430.
81. Puente, Finalidad de la CNT, p. 14.
82. Gaston Leval, Conceptos econ¢micos en el socialismo libertario (Buenos Aires, 1935), p. 100.
83. Besnard quoted in Paniagua, Sociedad, p. 137.
84. Abad de Santill n, El organismo econ¢mico, p. 58; Leval, Precisiones, p. 222.
85. Paniagua, Sociedad, pp. 171, 172-77.
86. CNT, El congreso de Zaragoza, p. 236; italics added.
87. Solidaridad Obrera, 12 May 1936.
3. The CNT in Barcelona
The CNT possessed a dual role in Barcelona. First, in the context of economic backwardness and political repression, it was a revolutionary organization at its inception and-unlike the French CGT-remained revolutionary during the 1930s. Second, the CNT was a union that, like others, defended the everyday demands of its members. An examination of the two roles is indispensable for understanding the political and social situation that eventually led to revolution in 1936. The Confederaci¢n nacional de trabajo was born in Barcelona in 1910, its birth an indication that many anarchists who continued to reject political parties had temporarily put aside terrorist tactics to accept the union as the basis for the libertarian revolution. At its origin and throughout most of its history, the CNT had a very loose and antibureaucratic structure.1 It first built the organization around the Catalan regional Confederaci¢n and later included other regional confederations, coordinated by a national committee. The individual unions kept a great deal of autonomy, since the anarchosyndicalist CNT had a horror of overcentralization and consciously tried to avoid bureaucracy. The union had very few paid officials and minimal strike funds.
The main weapon of the CNT was to be the insurrectional general strike, the day when workers would put down their tools and take control of the means of production from a government and bourgeoisie in disarray. It supplemented this goal with other forms of anarchosyndicalist direct action-sabotage, boycotts, a virulent antiparliamentarism, and antipolitical propaganda.2 From its birth the Confederaci¢n was frequently declared illegal as the government reacted to strikes, acts of terrorism, or other forms of direct action.
After the First World War, persecution of the revolutionary CNT often contrasted with official tolerance of the reformist UGT. The Spanish government and, to a lesser extent, capitalist elites were willing to accept and sometimes even encourage the existence of this union, which was linked to the Socialist party and which generally advocated parliamentarism and cooperation with the state and political parties. Even the CNT was, at moments, willing to ally with its less revolutionary rival. In August 1917 the CNT supported a strike initiated by Socialists and the UGT to bring about a republic. Pro-anarchist historians have characterized its demands:
The strike proved to be entirely political, its demands influenced not by Anarchist ideas but by those of the Socialists. The CNT program in Barcelona . . . went no further politically than a demand for a republic, a militia to replace the professional army, the right of labor unions to veto (not enact) laws, divorce legislation, the separation of church and state.3 Certain of these demands went well beyond the standard Republican platform and frightened reformist elites. The Spanish state and the Catalan bourgeoisie were unable to enact even the moderate parts of the CNT program and thereby helped to push a large part of the organized working-class movement into a more revolutionary and antipolitical direction.4 Such inaction and timidity of the state and Spanish elites obstructed reformism in Barcelona and revealed "the weakness of the bourgeoisie as a revolutionary force."5 Historians have viewed the failed revolution of 1917 as another example of the collapse of the "bourgeois-liberal revolution" in Spain. The Catalan bourgeoisie, they have argued, wanted a democratic revolution that would de-Africanize Spain and render it European. The Socialists and, significantly, moderate sectors of the CNT wanted to assist the liberal bourgeois revolution; however, when working-class organizations called a general strike to usher in a republic, the Catalan elite became frightened and consequently abandoned the fight to democratize Spain. In 1936, only when the CNT and other working-class organizations took nearly total power-political, economic, military, and police-did they secure a republic and the separation of Church from state and military from civilian government, basic features of what was known in the rest of Western Europe as the bourgeois revolution.
According to anarchist historians, the Confederaci¢n suffered brutal repression following the First World War and the failed revolution.6 From 1919 to 1923, anarchosyndicalist militants were tortured, assassinated, and imprisoned. Police falsely charged that "hundreds" of activists had died "attempting to escape." The cenetistas retaliated by assassinating "intransigent bosses, policemen . . . the president of the government . . . the archbishop." According to employers, in Barcelona from approximately 1911 to 1921, there were 848 victims of class violence, of whom 230 died and 618 were injured; another 400 were assaulted.7 Most of the victims were workers. In 1919-1920 the social climate deteriorated further because of a shortage of raw materials and food. In an inflationary economic climate, workers began demanding a guaranteed minimum salary and striking more frequently. According to industrialists, the CNT gained support through boycotts and threats to force workers to join the union and through payments extorted from businessmen. By the end of March 1919, a general strike had shut down Barcelona, and a new state of war had been declared. As we have seen, the employers demanded from the authorities an energetic campaign to eliminate the CNT and initiated a lockout. In addition, the Fomento recommended that Catalan employers adopt a variety of repressive techniques-blacklists, strikebreakers, armed guards, and mutual aid against boycotts. Syndicalist moderates in the CNT, such as Salvador Segu¡ and Angel Pesta¤a, who were willing to compromise with the state and the UGT and who relegated the realization of libertarian communism to a relatively distant future, could not bring moderation to prevail in an atmosphere of terrorism, repression, and economic stagnation. Although the moderates remained a minority in the 1920s, they did not disappear; in response to them in 1927 the Federaci¢n anarquista ib"šrica was formed to ensure that the revolutionary virtues of the CNT were not diluted by syndicalists and reformists. The FAI's membership included the most famous anarchist activists and theorists: Diego Abad de Santill n, Juan Garc¡a Oliver, the Ascaso brothers, and the legendary Buenaventura Durruti. In its quest for revolutionary purity the FAI exhibited a tendency toward centralism. Thus, the Federaci¢n resembled Lenin's Bolshevik party in very significant ways. Like the Bolsheviks, the FAI fought against "trade-union consciousness" among the working class and sought to keep revolutionary ideals alive. In fact, a historian has labeled one current within the FAI "anarchobolshevik." Juan Garc¡a Oliver, one of the most important anarchobolsheviks, argued for the "conquest of power," a kind of anarchist dictatorship.8 Like many Leninists, the FAI considered itself the "elite," the "vanguard," or the "consciousness" of the CNT and the working class. If in the end the fa¡stas were successful in keeping a significant part of the organized working class on a revolutionary path, they were aided immeasurably by a state and a bourgeoisie that assassinated or jailed moderates in the CNT. Like the CNT, the FAI did not always maintain its revolutionary purity and sometimes negotiated with political parties in violation of its own principles. These deals and negotiations were important because they prefigured the participation by both CNT and FAI in the Republican government during the Revolution. They also revealed that anarchist and anarchosyndicalist antiparliamentarism and antistatism were often abstractions. During the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, anarchists who were exiled in France agreed to cooperate with antimonarchist political parties.9 Unofficially, radical and moderate sectors of the CNT collaborated with Catalan nationalists even though the organization condemned Catalan separatism.10 The FAI even played a role in the creation of the Second Republic: The FAI did not always behave as a pure flame of Anarchist consistency; on the contrary, it was ready to bend its antiparliamentary principles almost to the breaking point when crucial situations arose. Thus, in the municipal elections of 1931, fa¡sta delegates joined their moderate opponents in supporting a Republican-Socialist coalition.11
The electoral victory of the Left in the large towns convinced King Alfonso XIII to abdicate. One historian has attributed these contradictions between anarchist ideology and practice to the personality of the fa¡stas and has argued that in 1930 their impulsiveness led them to abandon doctrinal purity to collaborate with politicians.12 Paradoxically, in 1931 the same impulsiveness induced them to invoke doctrinal purity to avoid reformism. However, such an important separation of theory from practice cannot be attributed merely to the "always impulsive" character of the fa¡sta. On the contrary, these contradictions revealed the bankruptcy of anarchosyndicalist apoliticism. The revolts of 1932 and 1933 demonstrated this contradiction. In January 1932 the FAI, which largely controlled the CNT at this time, attempted to incite a social revolution and proclaimed libertarian communism in the Catalan mining districts of the Alto Llobregat and Cardoner. In a number of towns, the rebels confiscated the weapons of the Somaten, Catalan police auxiliaries.13 In Sallent, syndicalists seized the powder kegs and dynamite of the potash factory and raised the red flag on the town hall. The revolutionaries took control of the telephones and the roads. After guardias had been fired on and injured, the governor sent the military "to intimidate the disobedient villages." In February other Catalan towns were affected by the movement:
In all the localities where libertarians dominated the situation temporarily and tried to make the social revolution, they found themselves forced to constitute executive committees charged with maintaining order and guarding the disgruntled and opponents. Even if they wished to abolish laws, install a society without authority or compulsion, and permit freedom for the creative spontaneity of the masses, they imposed their domination by force through decrees they modestly called proclamations. Far from realizing "anarchy," the revolutionary leaders, armed and possessing dynamite, established what could be called the "dictatorship of the proletariat" without taking into account the opinion of the peasants and the petty bourgeoisie.14
A left-wing communist has noted that the insurrectionaries of January "did not behave apolitically but politically."15 The first act of the victorious revolutionaries was to take political power and rule through an executive committee.
The failed revolts also revealed the tendency of the libertarian militants to plan in secret rather than democratically consult with the rank and file. Both the CNT and the FAI alternated between a kind of Blanquist belief in the conspiracy of the few to bring about the revolution and a counterfaith in the revolutionary spontaneity of the masses. The revolt of January 1933 demonstrated the failure of both the conspiratorial and spontaneous ideologies: a strike of CNT railwaymen had been planned for the beginning of January 1933, despite the fact that the UGT largely controlled this sector and that many CNT railway workers were reluctant to strike.16 Elements of the FAI, led by Garc¡a Oliver and other anarchists, nonetheless disregarded the lukewarm revolutionary sentiment among the workers and prepared to launch an insurrection. On 8 January 1933, CNT bands in Barcelona attacked military barracks; in several villages and towns throughout Catalonia libertarian communism was proclaimed. Money, private property, and exploitation were abolished-until government troops arrived to suppress the revolt. The lesson of the January revolt was not that the FAI lacked realism, since the social situation during the Second Republic was such that even a small group of conspirators could frequently spark revolts in Catalonia and throughout Spain. What was at issue here was the contradiction between democratic theory and conspiratorial practice, a contradiction that reemerged during the Revolution.
Responding to the government's repression of anarchists, peasants, and workers after the failed revolts of 1932 and 1933 and acknowledging the government's inability to realize reform, the CNT enthusiastically propagated its antipolitical ideology and advocated abstention from the elections of November 1933. Durruti told seventy-five thousand workers in the Barcelona bullring, "Workers, you who voted yesterday [i.e., in previous elections] without considering the consequences: if they told you that the Republic was going to jail nine thousand laborers, would you have voted?"17 It is hard to determine how widely workers followed the CNT's call not to vote, but in the province of Barcelona abstentions reached almost 40 percent, compared to 30 percent in the rest of the country.18 Perhaps popular apathy was responsible, or commitment to anarchosyndicalist positions may have explained the high percentage of abstentions in the Catalan capital.
After the electoral victory of the Right, the CNT attempted yet another revolutionary takeover in December 1933.
To the people: The CNT and the FAI summon you to armed insurrection. . . . We are going to achieve libertarian communism. . . . The women in their homes. The worker at his job. . . . Private property is abolished and all wealth is at the disposition of the collective. The factories, shops, and the entire means of production will be taken over by organized proletarians and put under the control and administration of the factory committee, which will try to maintain the current dimensions and characteristics of production. . . . The CNT and the FAI will be represented by red and black colors. . . . Any other flag must be considered counterrevolutionary. . . . You must be ready to give your lives in defense of the revolution that offers all of you the two most stable means of life: economic independence and liberty.19 Although this revolt, limited to Aragon, failed as disastrously as its predecessors, the point here is not so much to criticize the CNT's and FAI's tactics (although they were certainly ill-conceived) but to show the nature of the Confederaci¢n's revolutionary practice. First, the proclamation announced the advent of libertarian communism and liberty in general, but this new social organization demanded absolute obedience to the CNT and the FAI ("any other flag will be considered counterrevolutionary"). Second, the decree ordered the revolutionary worker to stay on the job and his wife to stay at home. As anarchosyndicalist theorists had noted, in libertarian communism the factory committee would not change the nature of production or, in this case, the sexual division of labor. In fact, the FAI and the CNT declared that the size and dimensions of production would be preserved, at least momentarily. Prefiguring the post-July 1936 period, only the control of the productive forces, not production itself, would change. In the social revolution the worker would labor for the factory council.
With the Right bolstered by its electoral victory and the subsequent failure of the CNT insurrection at the end of 1933, Socialists feared that fascism could soon take power in Spain as it had recently done in Germany and Austria. The Socialist cry became Better Vienna than Berlin; the armed resistance of the Viennese workers was preferable to the passive submission of the German working class. The Socialists began to seek partners for an antifascist alliance. In addition, sections of the Socialist rank and file, particularly rural workers, were becoming increasingly radicalized because of ineffective governmental land reform projects and difficult conditions in the countryside. Disappointed with the results of his collaboration during the first two years of the Second Republic, Largo Caballero adopted a more radical position and proposed a "revolutionary" alliance with the CNT; but many CNT militants remained understandably skeptical. After all, the Confederaci¢n had sometimes obtained less than expected from its compromises with the Socialists and the UGT. As has been seen, in 1917 the coalition had even failed to bring about a republic, and anarchosyndicalist militants remembered how Largo Caballero had profited from his position as Primo's state counselor to win adherents to the legal UGT and undermine the banned CNT.
In the 1930s the rivalry continued. In 1930-1931 the libertarians' contacts with other left-wing parties and unions had aided the formation of the Second Republic, and workers flocked into the Confederaci¢n's unions. In Barcelona and other regions neither the repression of the dictatorship nor its incomplete modernization had eradicated the social base of the CNT.20 The anarchosyndicalists' militancy and successful struggle to reestablish their organizations provoked countermeasures by the Socialist-backed government, which again attempted to suppress the CNT and jailed many of its activists. The UGT used its influence in Madrid to attack the CNT's power base in the port of Barcelona.
Despite the coolness of most of the Confederaci¢n to an alliance with the Socialists and the UGT, certain anarchosyndicalists were ready for a revolutionary coalition. In February 1934 a widely distributed essay by Valeriano Orob¢n Fern ndez was published, urging a revolutionary alliance between the CNT, Socialists, and the tiny Communist party:
In order to defeat an enemy who is gaining ground on the proletariat, a granite-like block of working-class forces is indispensable. . . .
The alliance is going to occur on the revolutionary terrain that the CNT has always occupied, terrain which the Socialists now approach after the resounding failure of their experiences with bourgeois democracy.
Platform of the alliance: . . . Revolutionary working-class democracy is direct social action by the proletariat. . . .
The present theoretical position of the Socialist and Communist parties bestows excessive importance on the role of the political instrument in the revolutionary process. This attitude is odd in the official parties of historical materialism, which ought to see in the influence of the economy the touchstone of all real social transformation. We [anarchosyndicalists], despite the label of utopians which we are given, believe that the security of the revolution depends above all on the rapid and rational articulation of the economy. And so the mere slogan of political order is insufficient to embrace the fundamental problems of a revolution. What . . . is essential is the socialization of the means of production and extensive labor coordination and organization, which the construction of a new economy entails. And this cannot be the work of a central political power but of unions and communes which, as immediate and direct representatives of the producers, are in their respective areas the natural pillars of the new order.21
Orob¢n's article prefigured, however imperfectly, the CNT's alliance with other working-class organizations, particularly the increasingly radicalized UGT, during the civil war. He also stressed the economic basis of the workers' alliance. The anarchosyndicalist militant realized that the common ground between the CNT and Marxist revolutionaries was their vision of the economic future. Both tendencies agreed on the need to socialize production, to "reintegrate the unemployed into the productive process, to orient the economy toward an intensification of output and to raise the standard of living. . . . Work is, henceforth, an activity open to all and from it emanate all rights."22 Orob¢n's appeal for a revolutionary alliance with Socialists and Communists had only a limited influence within the CNT because the Catalan section, by far the most important branch, rejected such a coalition. The relative influence of Catalan anarchosyndicalism had increased at the expense of the rural sections of Andalusia, after the First World War.23 Furthermore, the Catalans did not have to contend with a strong Socialist or Communist party in their region. In the eyes of CNT militants, Catalan Socialists had discredited themselves by allying with the Catalan nationalists of the Esquerra. Many CNT militants came to regard the nationalists as enemies of the Confederaci¢n and considered them petty bourgeois. The atmosphere of collaboration that had existed between some sectors of the libertarian movement and Catalan nationalists quickly disappeared during the opening months of the Second Republic when the Esquerra joined with the forces of order to "save" the Catalan economy from strikes and agitation promoted by "irresponsible" elements in the CNT.24 In return, the Confederaci¢n accused the nationalists of profiting from CNT votes and then betraying the libertarian movement.25 As its name indicated, the CNT made its main priority to create a national workers' organization, not to strengthen Catalan nationalism. Catalan nationalists, particularly the right-wing Estat catal..., persecuted and outlawed the CNT even as the Confederaci¢n was being legalized in other regions of Spain.26 The CNT would ally with the Socialists and the UGT only if they would clearly break with the Catalan nationalists and firmly declare their revolutionary intentions. Although the Catalan CNT was resistant to Orob¢n's proposal, the Asturian section of the Confederaci¢n was more receptive to a working-class alliance. In contrast to its organization in Catalonia, the CNT was a minority union in Asturias; its local leadership understood that it could participate in the revolution only by cooperating with its rivals.27 The coalition prepared the way for the Asturias revolt, which was to be ignited by the political events of 1934. In October of that year, the CEDA (Confederaci¢n espa¤ola de derechas aut¢nomas) entered the government. The CEDA was a right-wing Catholic party that many on the Left feared would acquiesce in a "fascist" coup d'"štat in Spain. Even the moderate-and Catholic-president of the republic, Niceto Alcal Zamora, doubted that the leader of the CEDA, Gil Robles, would be loyal to the republic and was reluctant to call him to form a government. Nevertheless, on 4 October Alcal Zamora permitted the formation of a government that included three ministers from the CEDA. The following day in Asturias the coal miners, who had been increasingly politicized by what they viewed as the failure of the republic and radicalized by deteriorating working conditions, began the famous Asturias insurrection, the prelude to the civil war that was to erupt two years later. It is not necessary for our purposes to describe in detail the bloody repression of the revolt by the elite Foreign Legion and the Moorish troops of General Franco. It is important to note, however, that local committees composed usually of Socialists, Communists, and-depending on the town-anarchosyndicalists, attempted to put their plans for social revolution into practice; in various towns and villages of the region, the means of production and distribution were collectivized.
In Catalonia, at the time of the Asturias revolt, the "Catalan state within the Federal Spanish Republic" was declared by Lluis Companys, the leader of the Catalan nationalists grouped in the Esquerra. This attempt at Catalan independence failed miserably. It clearly demonstrated the limits of Catalan nationalism, whose social base was too weak and narrow to form an independent nation. As we have seen, the Catalan bourgeoisie had long made its peace with Madrid and the traditionalist elements of central and southern Spain; it lacked the strength to overcome their influence and the dynamism to dominate the entire nation economically and politically. Thus, radical Catalan nationalism could not count on the support of a large part of the upper bourgeoisie that depended for protection and favors on Madrid. Lacking the support of the upper class and the CNT, radical Catalan nationalism in the 1930s was the province of what for lack of a better name we call the petty bourgeoisie-technicians, shopkeepers, funcionarios, clerks, artisans, and sharecroppers. Their nationalism was not only political but cultural and involved as well a renaissance of Catalan as a spoken and written language. The economic possibilities of a nationalism that called for a separate Catalan state were severely restricted, because the feeble Catalan industries depended both on protection granted by Madrid and on the impoverished markets in the rest of the peninsula. Catalan nationalism might mean a desirable political and cultural independence from a bureaucratic and centralized Spanish state, but many Catalans of varying social origins realized that, given the condition of regional industries, a separate nation might well lead to their economic destruction. The failed insurrections in Catalonia and Asturias generated rather severe repression of the Left by the right-wing government. Various estimates placed the number of political prisoners in Spanish jails between twenty thousand and thirty thousand individuals. In Catalonia the number of prisoners has been estimated at four thousand, most of whom were Catalan nationalist, not working-class, militants.28 Throughout 1935 the Left feared a continued crackdown and repression by the Right. On 14 April 1935, the fourth anniversary of the Second Republic's founding, the military officers who defeated the October revolution in Catalonia and Asturias received medals in a public ceremony in the center of Madrid.29 The government desired to create-perhaps as the French had done after the Paris Commune of 1871-a republic of order that could protect private property and the Church. The effort was, of course, unsuccessful. Republican stability proved difficult to achieve in a country whose rural population was thirsting for land and whose working-class militants were often enrolled in revolutionary organizations.
The Left drew together to end the Right's repression. In January 1936 the Socialists, republicans, POUM, UGT, Catalan nationalists, dissident syndicalists (Partido sindicalista), and the Communists signed the program of the Popular Front. It was basically an electoral coalition designed to preserve republican institutions and offered only vague solutions to socioeconomic problems. In fact, the French Popular Front, which was hardly a revolutionary alliance, was much bolder than its Spanish counterpart when it demanded nationalization of defense industries. In Spain, paradoxically, where many fundamental social and economic problems were yet unsolved and where land reform and economic modernization were needed to develop agriculture and industry, the unity of the Popular Front remained almost exclusively electoral. The representatives of the moderate republican parties who signed the program made it clear that they rejected the three major proposals of the Socialists- nationalization of land and its distribution to the peasantry, nationalization of banks, and "workers' control."30 Although some rightists were favorably impressed by the moderation of the program of the Popular Front, the failure of the Left to agree on some of the most important social and economic issues anticipated the tensions and ruptures that would recur during the Revolution. The Catalan Left also forged its own Popular Front-or more precisely, Front d'Esquerres-which included Communists, Socialists, poumistas, rabassaires (smaller Catalan tenants), and a variety of Catalan nationalists who supported the Second Republic. Its program demanded the restoration of regional self-government guaranteed by Catalan statute, which the right-wing government had suspended after the failed revolution of October 1934. In addition, the Catalan leftist coalition called for preservation of the "social advances of the Republic" and for application of the repressive Law on Vagabonds of August 1933 against "those who are really vagabonds," not against unemployed workers. Although the entire Left, including anarchosyndicalists, agreed on the need to eliminate "parasites," the CNT and some rank-and-file poumistas considered the content of the program of the Catalan and Spanish Popular Fronts insufficiently radical.
The CNT had reasons of its own to fear continuation of the bienio negro, or the government of the Right, since many of its militants had been jailed, and some were facing the death penalty, which had been restored in 1934. During April 1934 in Zaragoza the Confederaci¢n had embarked on a two- month general strike, of which one goal was the liberation of jailed militants. The Popular Front did offer amnesty for the prisoners; in return, the CNT toned down its campaign for abstention. Although some unions and leaders reiterated the official position against political participation, others-such as the influential Construction Union-deviated from the classic anarchist position.31 This policy, of "the negation of the negation," gave the green light to the rank and file to vote for the Popular Front.32 Even the famous fa¡sta Durruti openly advocated that CNT members go to the polls.33
As might be expected, the electoral campaign aroused passions all over the country and especially in Barcelona, where the electorate became increasingly polarized. The Right was divided, and its more moderate elements isolated. The abstentionism urged by the Uni¢ democr...tica de Catalunya, which represented Catalan Christian democrats, was condemned by more extremist Catholics as a "desertion and betrayal of the homeland and a flagrant disobedience of the principles that the Holy See and the Spanish episcopate have recently affirmed."34 In February 1936 the Popular Front won an important victory. Nationwide, it captured from 47 to 51.9 percent of the votes, compared to the 43 to 45.6 percent for the Right. In Catalonia, 59 percent voted for the Left, 41 percent for the Right.35 To an unknown extent, the CNT contributed to the victory by covertly recommending against abstention ("we must free twenty thousand workers still jailed and obtain amnesty").36 In Barcelona and Zaragoza, where anarchism was influential, the number of abstentions fell to 27 percent and 31 percent respectively, as opposed to 40 percent and 38 percent in 1933. Even allowing for the CNT's exaggeration of its own importance, the increase in the number of voters was indisputable; according to another estimate, abstentions fell in the city of Barcelona from 38 percent in 1933 to 31 percent in 1936.37 Even in 1936, however, popular apathy continued to cause many abstentions. The victory of the Left heightened the fears of the Right that the Popular Front would violently secure the separation of Church from state, reduce the power of the military, encourage regional nationalisms, and perhaps put land reform into practice. In addition, the failed revolts of 1932, 1933, and 1934 raised the specter that it would not be the moderate republicans such as Manuel Aza¤a or Mart¡nez Barrio who would secure certain features of the unfinished bourgeois-liberal revolution but rather, as in Russia in 1917, working-class revolutionaries who had no respect for private property. CNT militants, leftists in the Socialist party and the UGT, poumistas, and Communists might not only institute lay and civilian rule; they might also nationalize or collectivize the means of production. Throughout the Second Republic military officers dealt with threats to the traditional order and "separatisms" of the periphery by plotting against the republic, but those in uniform were not solely responsible for the lack of social peace. Workers continually pressed their demands through strikes, many of which the CNT led. The CNT's ideology and political activity have already been examined, but its day-to-day functions as a union, representing its membership and strengthening its organization, have not. An investigation of the CNT's role as a union that demanded less work, job security, better benefits, and higher pay for its male and female membership is necessary in order to understand the character of the CNT from 1931 to 1936 and the demands of the Barcelonan working class. When the Revolution erupted in July 1936, the CNT would find itself having to combat desires it had encouraged during the Second Republic.
With the advent of the republic, many CNT unions experienced a massive influx of new members, estimated at over 100,000 in Catalonia.38 In 1931, CNT members were 58 percent of the working class from the city of Barcelona and 30 to 35 percent from the province.39 Barcelona's workers followed their previously established pattern of disregarding ideology and switching to the union that they thought would best protect them. As in 1922, after the repressive Generals Mart¡nez Anido and Arlegu¡ had been transferred, workers abandoned the right-wing Sindicato libre and joined the reopened anarchosyndicalist unions.40 In 1931 the Metallurgical Union of Barcelona reported that its membership had jumped in several months from 18,500 to 29,000 and that it had exhausted its supply of union cards.41 The Construction Union issued 42,000 cards in a brief period. Workers joined the Confederaci¢n in large numbers but, complained CNT officials in Barcelona, did not pay their dues or attend meetings. "Many adherents are not up to date with their dues. All membership cards must be checked, and we must make everyone who is behind realize the necessity of being up to date. In case someone refuses, he must not be permitted to work."42
If reluctant to pay dues, workers were not hesitant to strike. In 1931 the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona described the situation immediately after the establishment of the republic: The petitions for new working conditions, and the strikes that the workers launch when the employers refuse to accept these [conditions] coincide with violent demonstrations by groups of the unemployed. The tactic that is followed is to present new demands only to a small number of firms and then to call on other firms if these demands are accepted or, if not, to call a partial strike.43
A Catalan republican criticized the workers for wanting to satisfy all their desires immediately after the proclamation of the Second Republic.44 At the end of May and the beginning of June 1931, agitation continued unabated. The CNT admitted that it could not control the strikes that erupted in the summer of 1931. The government felt forced to take measures to guarantee the right to work. In July the governor, Carlos Espl , and military authorities led by General L¢pez Ochoa threatened to replace striking electricians and other workers with military personnel.
A wide variety of issues provoked strikes; prominent among them were disputes over piecework. A number of unions demanded the "total elimination of piecework and incentives."45 This demand had been voiced as early as the founding congress of the CNT in 1910 in Barcelona and would continue to be popular among the city's workers even during the civil war and Revolution. Other persistent desires were a slower pace of work and a reduction of the workweek. In 1912 a right-wing French observer remarked that Spanish workers were not fond of laboring quickly and often engaged in slowdowns.46 During World War I Gaston Leval, the anarchosyndicalist militant who worked at various jobs in both France and Spain, was pleasantly surprised at the much slower rhythms of production, more frequent breaks, and the relative absence of overtime and piecework in Barcelona compared to Paris.47 In the 1920s an engineer of the Maquinista, who introduced pay incentives based on a system of "scientific" organization of work, feared workers' "laziness" and "tricks . . . to deceive" the time-measurement monitors.48
Historians have correctly asserted that the numerous strikes and demands for a shorter workweek were responses to the increasing number of unemployed in Barcelona in the 1930s. As has been seen, unemployment insurance was practically nonexistent in Barcelona, which made workers' solidarity with the jobless critical. Various CNT unions proposed schedules to share the limited amount of work equitably among all workers. In addition to solidarity with the jobless, Barcelona workers wanted to diminish the workweek simply to work less. As will be seen, a reduced work schedule was only one method-and not necessarily the most efficient-of decreasing the number of jobless. When the forty-eight hour workweek was reimposed in November 1934 during the bienio negro, strikes erupted, and workers refused to labor more than forty-four hours.49
This bienio negro (1934-1935) was a period in which the labor movement found it difficult to protect its gains. In 1934 workers went on strike less frequently than previously and lost labor conflicts more often than in 1933.50 Following the victory of the Popular Front in 1936, the forty-four-hour week was reestablished, and both CNT and UGT metallurgists demanded reimbursement for the extra four hours' work per week that had been required during 1935. The Generalitat mediated this dispute and resolved it by a wage increase. Many metallurgists remained dissatisfied with the settlement, however, and embarked on work slow-downs, which cut production in half. In various political and social climates throughout the Second Republic, Barcelona's workers fought hard over bread-and-butter issues. From 1931 to 1936, although the unions' attempts to win a six-hour day were unsuccessful and the goal of a thirty-six-hour week went unfulfilled, a forty-two-hour week was established in several important sectors of Catalan industry.
In order to avoid work, workers in the CNT and other unions even injured themselves. The Maquinista reported that during a bridge construction project in Seville, workers provoked minor infections by cutting themselves to take advantage of sick pay. As a result, the Maquinista was dropped by its insurance company.51 Employers feared that if they had to shoulder the entire burden of accident insurance and indemnities, counterproductive consequences could be expected: Protection for the worker could encourage desires to obtain a permanent disability. . . . This is a fact verified by the broad experience of insurance companies and mutual associations. To receive indemnities for a longer period of time, treatment for many accidents has been prolonged beyond any real need through the use of caustic and corrosive agents (c usticos y corrosivos), even at the risk to one's health.52
The struggle for a shortened workweek assumed another dimension: though highly dechristianized and often anticlerical, Catalan workers nevertheless defended the traditional fiestas with vigor. In 1912 a French Catholic described such an occasion:
the strength of popular feeling, the need for rest and amusement . . . were so urgent that, in spite of their abolition, the Spanish people spontaneously celebrated the customary work stoppages of Saint John on Monday and Saint Paul the following Saturday. Disregarding the employers, they deserted all the workshops. Republican anticlericals gave into the [popular] pressure by organizing balls and operettas.53
The CNT Textile Union protested against the suppression of twenty-three paid, interweekly holidays.54 Barcelonan workers were ready to invoke "tradition" in order to struggle against working time. In 1927 the Fomento noted that the employers who attempted to make their workers make up or recover feast days that were not Sundays could expect trouble.55 Indeed, strikes lasting a considerable number of days to protest the schedule did occur in the spring and summer of 1927, in 1929, and in 1931.56 In addition, workers would sometimes skip the day before or after a holiday, traditional or not; legislation was formulated to restrict this custom. Working women, who composed 57.3 percent of the work force in the Barcelonan textile industry, seem to have been particularly combative about the work schedule and other issues that directly concerned them, such as maternity insurance.57 Women wanted the prohibition on night work to apply to the hours of 11 P.M. to 5 A.M. instead of 10 P.M. to 4 A.M., since they did not wish to rise one hour earlier. When a law prohibiting night work for women was altered, the change of schedule "was not welcomed by the workers," who then went on strike.58 Women laboring at a textile factory in Badalona refused management's proposal for a split workweek, half the women to work three days and the other half to labor the three remaining days; the women favored a workweek of the same three days for everyone.59 The CNT Textile Union demanded that pregnant women receive four months of maternity leave.60
Judgments concerning women's militancy must be mixed. Many Spanish women were less likely than men to join and lead unions because they considered their employment to be temporary. In 1930, the 1,109,800 working women constituted 12.6 percent of the total work force and 9.16 percent of the female population.61 Only 43,000 to 45,000 joined unions; of these, 34,880 to 36,380 belonged to the Catholic trade-union movement. Some began to labor at age twelve or fourteen and quit immediately after they were married, usually between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. If widowed, some returned to the labor market. In 1922, Barcelonan industrialists asserted that most women workers left their jobs to get married and that very few labored until retirement age.62 In 1930, 65.6 percent of working women were single, 19.29 were married, and 14.26 were widowed.63 In Barcelona, 65 percent of the active female population worked in industry.
In many families that sought to acquire a small business or a piece of land, women controlled the family budget and may have hesitated at the loss if they or their husbands were to join walkouts. Some female workers, who labored for a wage that complemented the earnings of other family members, were also reluctant regarding strike action. Women from the impoverished middle classes, who worked to keep up appearances, may have resisted participation in militant movements. In July 1931, 560 employees-mainly office personnel and repair workers-struck against the telephone company.64 Young women seem to have been among the first to return to work. During the conflict three male strikers, who were probably members of a CNT affiliate that claimed to represent 8,500 workers in this branch, were stopped by police for trailing three non-striking young women. The strike ended in failure, perhaps because it generally lacked the support of working women, who were much less likely to strike than their male fellow-workers but who often received half the mens' wages.65 Militancy, though, should not be exclusively identified with strikes or union membership, and as has been seen, women were capable of defending what they considered to be their own interests against those of entrepreneurs.
Conflicts arose not only between employers and workers-male or female-but also, significantly, between employers and their foremen, who also refused to work during fiestas.66 On 8 and 24 September 1932, foremen skipped work, and their employers denied them their wages. The industrialists claimed that if foremen were absent, even though workers were present, the day would be totally wasted. The employers asked for the state's help in persuading the supervisory personnel to fulfill their duties. The government mediated the dispute, and it established that the foremen's union, El Radium, had petitioned the employers' federation several times for retirement and health insurance without receiving a response. In October 1932 the authorities concluded that foremen must come to work during interweekly holidays but that insurance for sickness must also be established. The civil governor insisted that foremen abide by the recognized work schedule.
These tensions between the foremen and their employers showed that the industrialists had stubborn adversaries even among the supervisory personnel of their own factories. In fact, class conflict between foremen and employers was frequently as intense as were struggles between workers and bosses. In contrast, during the same period in France foremen were the sergeants of industry, generally committed to the success of their enterprise and to industrial discipline. Indeed, supervisory personnel often exceeded their employers in concern for the smooth functioning of the firms. Yet in Catalonia the foremen seriously contested the authority of their bosses and occasionally even held them hostage during strikes. At times, the supervisors detonated explosives and destroyed property.67 The 1934 foremen's strike took on "a violent character with bombs, acts of sabotage, and the entire repertory of extremism," which the entrepreneurs thought was "inappropriate" for this category of personnel: "Although it might seem strange, the foremen, who should be models of equanimity, serenity, and reflection during social troubles, forgot their role and adopted a rebellious attitude that matched the most extreme working-class organizations."68 Even non-CNT foremen of certain textile factories committed acts of violence. These members of the so-called workers' aristocracy were involved in assassination attempts against "scabs" and sometimes planted bombs in factories that continued to operate during the strike. Their acts demonstrated the incapacity of the entrepreneurs to impose or implant what might be called capitalist hegemony upon a group whose allegiance was absolutely necessary to industry's effective functioning.
Throughout the 1930s, workers staged violent strikes to protest layoffs and firings. In September 1930, firings provoked a widespread strike in construction.69 In the same year, another strike in metallurgy demonstrated how workers' power obstructed dismissals. On 2 October, 760 workers walked out of a foreign-owned metalworking factory that employed 1,100 workers in Badalona.70 Two days later, police arrested and jailed two workers for violation of the right to work. The authorities then detained four women, whose militancy and solidarity with strikers had provoked their brutal treatment from the Guardia civil. Metallurgical workers protested the arrests and charged that police, who were engaging in loading and unloading goods for the factory, were acting as strikebreakers. On 24 October, the Uni¢n patronal de Badalona agreed to reinstate the dismissed workers but affirmed the employers' right to discharge personnel for "justified motives." Furthermore, the bosses prohibited union delegates from acting inside the factory but pledged not to dismiss workers who had a year of seniority. Workers were to return to work the following Monday. Without notifying the authorities, they continued their illegal strike.
Tensions increased on 29 October, when strikers disobeyed a summons to disperse given by mounted police armed with sabres. The guardia arrested five men and four women who were carrying stones. The next day, 250 "scabs," in the governor's words, entered the factory. When a truck accompanied by policemen left the firm, strikers, "presumably from the Sindicato £nico (CNT)," attacked the vehicle with small arms. Those in the truck, perhaps guardias themselves, fired back and killed two strikers. The day after, the governor responded to the workers' deaths by jailing the presidents of the transportation and construction unions of Badalona. During the funeral of the strikers, the Guardia civil "was forced to charge" the crowd of three to four thousand persons. Little wonder that both workers and bosses who wanted to encourage a moderate and nonrevolutionary trade unionism of the northern European variety were unsuccessful in Barcelona. Such close collaboration between private industry and the state, which seems to have acted not only to ensure the right to work but as an armed strikebreaker, also reinforced anarchosyndicalist ideology in Barcelona. Strikes over firings continued during the Second Republic. Catalan workers had long memories, and workers and civil servants who had been "unfairly" dismissed during the general strike of 1917 demanded compensation.71 Large metalworking factories, such as the Casa Girona, also found it difficult to discharge workers without suffering a strike.72 Until the bienio negro Catalan employers found it very hard to lay off personnel; even during 1934-1935, dismissals led to strikes. From April 1935 to January 1936 out of thirteen strikes only four or five were caused by salary demands. The majority were provoked by the discharge of a comrade or the desire to share more equally the limited number of jobs.73 With the victory of the Popular Front, employers were pressured to rehire and indemnify workers who had been dismissed for subversive activities. Wage earners and foremen in transportation, textiles, and dyeing and finishing-workers who had been associated with acts of sabotage-returned to their posts. Those who had been discharged for nonpolitical reasons were also able to return to the payroll. In June 1936, rural proprietors joined urban industrialists who voiced fears that they would no longer be able to fire workers.
The violent atmosphere in Barcelona sprang not only from conflict between classes but also from rivalry between unions. During the 1930s the struggles of the CNT and the UGT produced bloodshed, particularly in the port of Barcelona where the CNT dominated. The UGT posed a threat to anarchosyndicalist control there since, in addition to a reformist ideology that attracted some workers during Primo's dictatorship and the early years of the Second Republic, the Socialist union was able to use its influence in the government to win benefits for its members. In 1930 the government backed the UGT and the Sindicato libre against the "communist and anarchosyndicalist" Sindicato £nico.74 In November and December of that year, the CNT seemed to have successfully resisted the drive of its rivals, who had acquired the reputation of strikebreakers, to control hiring on the docks. One can only speculate whether the CNT remained a potent force in Barcelona despite or perhaps because of its largely illegal status until the opening years of the Second Republic. What is certain is that Primo's repression and modernization did not eliminate the Confederaci¢n. When the UGT leader, Largo Caballero, became Minister of Labor in 1931, violent conflicts continued in the port. In this dangerous atmosphere, workers had to be cautious and shrewd enough to choose the "correct" union, that is, the one that could protect their persons and their employment. In 1933 the conflict resumed.75 In April the CNT called a strike, and several workers who continued to labor were killed. According to the employers, the struggle between the two organizations prolonged the strike in March 1934 by gas and electrical workers. When one union achieved its demands, the other would attempt to outbid it and initiate a new walkout. In October 1934, the UGT- influenced Alianza obrera attempted to show-with some success, according to one observer-that it could initiate a general strike without CNT approval.76 The rivalry between the unions was further aggravated by the desire of each to place its members in the limited number of available jobs. After a strike, workers would flock into the victorious union-whether CNT or UGT.77 There was however another, less dramatic, side to the relation between the two unions. The CNT and the UGT also collaborated during the Second Republic, and their oscillation between conflict and cooperation would continue throughout the Revolution. The united front of the unions in 1936 again stimulated the long memory of Barcelonan wage earners. After the victory of the Popular Front, metallurgical workers demanded and received compensation for working a forty-eight-hour week during 1935 and the first few months of 1936.78 Both unions supported wage earners' demands for back pay for those workers who had struck in October 1934. In March the CNT and the UGT demanded the rehiring and indemnification of telephone workers fired during the strike of 1931.79 In May the number of strikes, particularly those protesting dismissals of employees, increased rapidly.80 Even the Generalitat's Minister of Labor, who was sympathetic to the labor movement, began to complain of "endemic" walkouts that threatened to destroy the Catalan economy. Unity of action between the two major Barcelonan working-class organizations produced a wave of work stoppages that, if less violent than those in 1931 and 1934, was more powerful. As could be expected, the capitalist elite repeated its hoary warning that "the reigning anarchy" might destroy its firms. The power of unions-especially of the CNT-increased on the shop floor as rank-and-file workers sought admission to the Confederaci¢n.81
During the Second Republic, the Barcelonan working class managed to maintain its standard of living. More than 35 percent of the workers obtained the forty-four-hour week, that is, a 9 percent reduction of the working day. Approximately 55 percent won wage increases of various kinds. About 33 percent achieved both wage increases and reduction of the working day. These gains were considerable since the price index was stable in Barcelona from 1931 to 1936. It might be added that the forty-four-hour week in metalworking was attained over the strident protests of the major Barcelonan manufacturers, who declared that no other region had reduced the workweek.82 Thus, in a period of political instability, worldwide economic depression, and high unemployment, Barcelona's working class demonstrated a remarkable ability to win somewhat higher wages, a shorter working week, and, occasionally, an end to piecework. The CNT and, to a lesser degree, the UGT were instrumental in many of the workers' victories. Yet there were two sides to the prewar CNT, which was not only a union fighting for the immediate gains of its constituency but also a revolutionary organization struggling for control of the means of production. During the Revolution these two functions of the Confederaci¢n would come into conflict because the Barcelonan working class would continue to fight, under even more unfavorable circumstances, for less work and more pay.
Notes
1. Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years, 1868-1936 (New York, 1978), p. 160; see also C"šsar M. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles y el poder 1868-1969 (Paris, 1972), p. 37 and Juan G¢mez Casas, Historia del anarcosindicalismo espa¤ol (Madrid, 1973), p. 94; Antonio Bar Cend¢n, "La confederaci¢n nacional del trabajo frente a la II Rep£blica," in Estudios sobre la II Rep£blica espa¤ola, ed. Manuel Ram¡rez (Madrid, 1975), p. 222.
2. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles, p. 33. On the definition of direct action, see Ricardo Sanz, El sindicalismo y la pol¡tica: Los solidarios y nosotros (Toulouse, 1966), p. 43, who argues that many workers misinterpreted direct action to mean a systematic use of force to solve labor disputes; Sanz defines direct action as face-to-face bargaining between labor and capital.
3. Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, p. 168; see also Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles, p. 43; Gerald Meaker, The Revolutionary Left in Spain, 1914-1923 (Stanford, 1974), p. 63.
4. Jos"š Peirats, La CNT en la revoluci¢n espa¤ola (Paris, 1971), 1:26. On the weakness and compromises of Spanish anticlericals, see Raymond Carr, Spain 1808-1975 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 490-94. 5. Paul Preston, "The Origins of the Socialist Schism in Spain, 1917-1931," Journal of Contemporary History 12, no. 1 (January 1977): 125.
6. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles, pp. 35-36.
7. Fomento de trabajo nacional, Memoria, 1921-1922.
8. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles, p. 50.
9. John Brademas, Anarcosindicalismo y revoluci¢n en Espa¤a (1930-1937), trans. Joaqu¡n Romero Maura (Barcelona, 1974), p. 31.
10. Enric Ucelay Da Cal, "Estat catal...: Strategies of Separation and Revolution of Catalan Radical Nationalism (1919-1933)" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1979), pp. 266-68. On cooperation between the Confederaci¢n and Catalan nationalists, see also Sanz, Sindicalismo, pp. 129, 184.
11. Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, pp. 217-18; see also Brademas, Anarcosindicalismo y revoluci¢n, p. 31; Susanna Tavera, "La CNT i la 'Rep£blica catalana,' " L'Aven"¡, no. 13 (February 1979): 46.
12. Brademas, Anarcosindicalismo y revoluci¢n, p. 50.
13. The remainder of this paragraph is based on Telegrama oficial, 21 January 1932, gobernador a ministro, caja 2412, AGA.
14. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles, p. 57.
15. G. Munis, Jalones de derrota: Promesa de victoria, Espa¤a 1930-1939 (Mexico City, 1948), p. 92. 16. Brademas, Anarcosindicalismo y revoluci¢n, pp. 98-103; Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, p. 245; Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles, p. 58; G¢mez, Historia del anarcosindicalismo, p. 169. 17. Durruti, quoted in Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, p. 250; see also Brademas, Anarcosindicalismo y revoluci¢n, p. 108.
18. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles, p. 61; Jos"š A. Gonz lez Casanova, Elecciones en Barcelona (1931- 1936) (Madrid, 1969), p. 26.
19. CNT, 9 December 1933, quoted in Brademas, Anarcosindicalismo y revoluci¢n, pp. 114-15.
20. Susanna Tavera, "Els anarcosindicalistes catalans i la dictadura," L'Aven"¡, no. 72 (July 1984): 65; Sanz, Sindicalismo, p. 123; for the growth of the CNT in Asturias at the end of Primo's dictatorship and the beginning of the Second Republic, see Adrian Shubert, Hacia la revoluci¢n: Or¡genes sociales del movimiento obrero en Asturias, 1860-1934, trans. Agueda Palacios Honorato (Barcelona, 1984), pp. 178- 79.
21. Cited in Peirats, La CNT, 1:83-87; italics added.
22. Ibid., p. 88.
23. Edward E. Malefakis, Agrarian Reform and Peasant Revolution in Spain (New Haven, 1970), pp. 301-2.
24. Francisco Madrid, Ocho meses y un d¡a en el gobierno civil de Barcelona: Confesiones y testimonios (Barcelona, 1932), p. 198.
25. Ibid., p. 238; Jordi Sabater, Anarquisme i catalanisme: La CNT i el fet nacional catal... durant la guerra civil (Barcelona, 1986), pp. 31-37.
26. Brademas, Anarcosindicalismo y revoluci¢n, p. 133. The CNT's daily newspaper, Solidaridad Obrera, was banned. See Peirats, La CNT, 1:101; see also Alberto Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social en Catalu¤a de 1930 a 1936 (Barcelona, 1971), p. 179.
27. Shubert, Hacia, p. 202.
28. Ricard Vinyes, "Sis octubre: Repressi¢ i represaliats," L'Aven"¡, no. 30 (September 1980); Sanz, Sindicalismo, p. 260.
29. Circular 17, 14 April 1935, 2416, AGA.
30. For the manifesto, Javier Tusell G¢mez, Las elecciones del frente popular en Espa¤a (Madrid, 1971), 2:352-58. It is also reproduced in Santos Juli , Or¡genes del frente popular en Espa¤a, 1934-1936 (Madrid, 1979), pp. 216-23.
31. Tusell, Las elecciones, 1:222; Santos Juli , Or¡genes, p. 131.
32. Brademas, Anarcosindicalismo y revoluci¢n, p. 163.
33. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles, p. 72.
34. Acci¢ cat"¢lica quoted in Tusell, Las elecciones, 1:114-15.
35. Elena Posa, "El front d'esquerres de Catalunya," L'Aven"¡, no. 1 (April 1977): 52.
36. Bar Cend¢n, "La confederaci¢n," p. 247, attributes the victory of the Popular Front to the CNT.
37. Gonz lez Casanova, Elecciones, pp. 26, 67. The effect of the CNT's abstentionist campaign is still a subject of dispute; see Mercedes Vilanova, "El abstencionismo electoral y su relaci¢n con las fuerzas pol¡ticas en la provincia de Gerona durante la Segunda Rep£blica: Un ejemplo, La Escala," in Homenaje a Dr. D. Juan Regl... Campistol (Valencia, 1975), 2:500-503; Vilanova concludes that the CNT's antipolitical position had little influence on its sympathizers.
38. Bar Cend¢n, "La confederaci¢n," p. 232; see also A. Cuc¢ Giner, "Contribuci¢n a un estudio cuantitativo de la CNT," Saitabi 20 (1970).
39. Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social, p. 12.
40. Fomento de trabajo nacional, Actas de la junta directiva, 24 November 1922.
41. Sindicato £nico de la metalurgia, Informe sobre su reorganizaci¢n y desenvolvimiento (Barcelona, 1931), p. 19; Sanz, Sindicalismo, p. 194.
42. Actas, pleno de juntas, federaci¢n local de sindicatos £nicos de Barcelona, 31 December 1931, 501, AS.
43. Quoted in Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social, pp. 201-2.
44. Madrid, Ocho meses, p. 154.
45. Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social, p. 203; Anna Monjo and Carme Vega, Els treballadors i la guerra civil (Barcelona, 1986), p. 14.
46. Valdour, L'ouvrier espagnol, 1:45, 329.
47. Gaston Leval, El pr¢fugo (Valencia, 1935), p. 142.
48. Antido Layret Foix, Organizaci¢n de una oficina para el c lculo de los tiempos de fabricaci¢n (Barcelona, 1931), pp. 16, 42.
49. Fomento, Memoria, 1934. In France the issue was a workweek of forty hours, not of forty-four hours.
50. Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social, pp. 220-24; Alberto del Castillo, La Maquinista Terrestre y Mar¡tima: Personaje hist¢rico (1855-1955) (Barcelona, 1955), pp. 460-61.
51. Castillo, La Maquinista Terrestre y Mar¡tima, pp. 464-65.
52. Fomento, Memoria, 1932.
53. Valdour, L'ouvrier espagnol, 1:52. On dechristianization, see the brief remarks in Josep Massot i Muntaner, Aproximaci¢ a la hist"¢ria religiosa de la Catalunya contempor...nia (Barcelona, 1973), pp. 119-24.
54. G. Blanco Santamar¡a and E. Ciordia P"šrez, La industria textil catalana (Madrid, 1933), p. 36.
55. Fomento, Actas, 14 February 1927.
56. Federaci¢n de fabricantes de hilados y tejidos de Catalu¤a, Memoria (Barcelona, 1930); Fomento, Memoria, 1932.
57. Figures in Rosa Mar¡a Capel Mu¤oz, La mujer espa¤ola en el mundo del trabajo, 1900-1930 (Madrid, 1980), p. 32.
58. Fomento, Memoria, 1928.
59. Gobernador a ministro, 10 August 1931, Leg. 7A, no. 1, AHN.
60. Madrid, Ocho meses, p. 194.
61. Rosa Mar¡a Capel Mart¡nez, ed., Mujer y sociedad en Espa¤a, 1700-1975 (Madrid, 1982), p. 213.
62. Fomento, Actas, 2 June 1922.
63. Capel, Mujer y sociedad, p. 214. There is also evidence that married women continued as wage earners (Cristina Border¡as Mond"šjar, "La evoluci¢n de la divisi¢n sexual del trabajo en Barcelona, 1924-1980: Aproximaci¢n desde una empresa del sector servicios-La Compa¤¡a Telef¢nica Nacional de Espa¤a" [Ph.D. diss., University of Barcelona, 1984], pp. 379-80). The figures for men were 39.13 percent single, 52.65 married, and 4.86 percent widowed.
64. 6, 9, and 15 July 1931, Leg. 7A, no. 1, AHN; 4,300 female workers were employed in the communications sectors-telephone, telegram, and post office-in 1930. In 1933 almost 40 percent of telephone workers were women.
65. Capel, Mujer y sociedad, p. 236; Mary Nash, Mujer, familia y trabajo en Espa¤a, 1875-1936 (Barcelona, 1983), p. 53.
66. The following paragraph is based on Federaci¢n de fabricantes, Memoria (Barcelona, 1933).
67. Fomento, Actas, 16 July 1934; Fomento, Memoria, 1934; Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social, pp. 223-24.
68. Fomento, Memoria, 1934.
69. Gobernador civil a ministro, Leg. 40A, no. 2, AHN.
70. The following paragraphs are based on telegrams, October 1930, Leg. 40A, no. 2, AHN.
71. Telegram, 20 April 1931 and Gobierno civil de Barcelona, Leg. 7A, no. 1, AHN.
72. Gobernador civil a ministro, 19 November 1931, Leg. 7A, no. 1, AHN; 23 August 1932, Leg. 6A, no. 35, AHN. See also Manuel Ram¡rez Jim"šnez, "Las huelgas durante la Segunda Rep£blica," Anales de sociolog¡a (1966): 81.
73. Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social, p. 227.
74. See series of telegrams in Leg. 7A, no. 1 and Leg. 40A, no. 2, AHN.
75. Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social, p. 207.
76. Adolfo Bueso, Recuerdos de un cenetista (Barcelona, 1978), 2:93.
77. Ibid., p. 135; Fomento, Memoria, 1934; Mercedes Cabrera, La patronal ante la II Rep£blica: Organizaciones y estrategia, 1931-1936 (Madrid, 1983), p. 101.
78. Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social, p. 230.
79. 20 March 1936, 147, AS.
80. The following is derived from Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social, pp. 231-88.
81. Acta de la reuni¢n, CNT caldereros, 12 May 1936, 1428, AS; Asamblea, CNT cargadores, 29 May 1936, 1404, AS; 14 January 1937, 182, AS.
82. Fomento, Memoria, 1934.
4. An Overview of the Revolution in Barcelona
Given the background of conflict between workers and bourgeois, the outbreak of revolution in Barcelona should come as no surprise. Weaker than its French counterpart, the Catalan bourgeoisie had developed only primitive productive forces, and workers' living standards remained relatively low. Into the 1930s, working-class militants of major organizations such as the CNT continued to adhere to revolutionary ideologies. During the Revolution these militants would take control of the means of production and attempt to put their ideologies into practice. Like other twentieth-century revolutionaries, the Barcelonan activists were forced to confront not only their declared enemies but also the indifference of those they claimed to represent. They reacted with both coercion and persuasion: terrorist tactics and labor camps supplemented patriotic propaganda and socialist realism. Before these topics can be explored, however, the eruption of the Spanish Revolution in Barcelona must be examined.
It was, ironically enough, the failure of the revolt against the republic by a large part of the military that detonated in Barcelona the revolution that those in uniform had dreaded. In the first half of 1936 mounting social and political violence throughout Spain and fears that the traditionalist order would soon be dismantled provoked the pronunciamiento of the Spanish generals, eventually headed by General¡simo Francisco Franco. In Barcelona the military revolt of 19 July was defeated because of the combined actions of republicans, Socialists, Communists, Guardia civil who remained loyal to the republic, and, most important, CNT militants. The CNT and the FAI became the strongest forces in Barcelona and dominated public power in the city after the failure of the revolt. Despite their supremacy, these libertarians decided to form a Central Committee of Antifascist Militias with the other left-leaning parties and unions of Catalonia.The committee was a government in everything but name; with CNT and FAI backing, the new regime created the "necessary patrols" and "disciplinary measures" to maintain order.1 Most observers have noted that the "anarchobolshevik" Juan Garc¡a Oliver was the central figure of the committee. Once again, as in the unsuccessful revolts of 1932 and 1933, the antipolitical, antistatist ideology of anarchosyndicalism turned out to be an abstraction. With power in the hands of the libertarians, popular anticlericalism manifested itself spectacularly in the first weeks of the Revolution. The "masses" violently reinforced the separation of Church and state that had been achieved only tentatively with the advent of the Second Republic. The Church was often hated by the popular classes because of its identification with the traditionalist order and its unproductive and "parasitic" nature.2 The efforts of a small group of sincere Christian democrats were not able to alter working-class militants' perception of the Church as reactionary. During the 1930s in Spain many concluded that the Church was, in effect, allied with "fascism." Anarchosyndicalist and other forces wanted to make certain that it would no longer act as a brake on the productive forces through its control of education or its influence on mores. Like many republicans, anarchists believed that "to secularize is to modernize."3 Solidaridad Obrera proclaimed, Down with the Church, and the CNT daily reported attacks on churches in working-class neighborhoods.4 Nearly every church in Barcelona was set afire; in the so-called red terror almost half the victims were ecclesiastics. According to clerical sources, 277 priests and 425 monks were assassinated.5
The attacks, the deaths, and the defeat of the army revolt in Catalonia prompted the flight of the great majority of the bourgeoisie from Barcelona. One anarchosyndicalist source has estimated that 50 percent of the bourgeoisie fled, 40 percent were "eliminated from the social sphere," and only 10 percent remained to continue work: "Bosses, managers, engineers, foremen, and so forth," feeling endangered, left the city.6 Thus many factory owners literally abandoned their firms, which, as working-class militants claimed, they had often neglected and underdeveloped. This surrender, with scarcely a struggle, had little precedent in Western Europe and revealed that the Barcelonan bourgeoisie had failed to build a broad social base of support and ultimately depended on police power for its control of the productive forces.
Unsure of future developments, some employers delayed their departure for several weeks or months after the pronunciamiento. An unknown number stayed in the city and worked in various capacities, presenting the unions with the problem of whether to admit them and their sons as members and how much to pay them.7 Some militants favored their admission and integration into the revolutionary economy, whereas others viewed the former bosses as potential saboteurs and feared their ability to manipulate revolutionary legislation to their advantage. In fact, to avoid workers' control, employers did form cooperatives; one year after the Revolution began, cooperatives had increased fivefold.8
As in many other social revolutions, the flight of the monied classes deprived many workers of their sources of income. Large numbers of domestics lost their jobs. With the approval of the Generalitat, bank accounts that had been either frozen or abandoned by employers were used to pay former servants (who sometimes inflated the amount of their back wages).9 As other employers departed, were arrested, or became destitute in 1937, the numbers of unemployed servants grew. Joblessness affected other areas of the economy: for example, two hundred construction workers were obliged to seek other employment when their project, which had been funded with utility bonds, was forced to close.10 Another firm, employing forty workers to make dresses for "high society," lost the majority of its clients.11 When firms were unable to pay workers, the latter-sometimes successfully-appealed to the Generalitat to put them on its payroll.
The flight of capital began well before the pronunciamiento, but was aggravated by the outbreak of the Revolution. In these first months, the Generalitat attempted to combat the problem by issuing decrees that prohibited hoarding of currencies and precious metals. Even small savers were tempted to hide their nest eggs or transfer them abroad. Throughout the war police charged hundreds with the offense of "evasion of capital." Even though it declined during the course of the war as local and national governments reasserted their authority, tax evasion by both individuals and collectives remained significant. Funds that could have been used to develop the productive forces or modernize equipment were often smuggled out of Catalonia or hidden to be divided among a firm's personnel. Militants of the CNT, often in collaboration with members of the UGT, whose leaders followed the line of the PSUC (Communist), took charge of many abandoned factories. Some of these new managers had been shop stewards before the Revolution. Their dynamism contrasted sharply with the attitude of most of their colleagues, who preferred to stay at home in July 1936. They immediately reorganized many firms, especially those with over one hundred workers, into collectives; in each collective workers elected a factory council from both CNT and UGT militants to run the factory. Other workshops and firms, especially those that had fewer than fifty workers and whose owners had remained in Barcelona to work during the Revolution, were jointly managed by the owner and a control committee of CNT and UGT militants.
In the weeks that followed the defeat of the pronunciamiento in Barcelona, unions and political parties of the Catalan Left recognized the need to legalize and coordinate the various forms of workers' control that had emerged after 19 July. On 14 August 1936 the Economic Council of Catalonia was created, and its members included Diego Abad de Santill n of the FAI, Juan P. F bregas of the CNT, Estanislao Ruiz Ponseti of the PSUC, Andr"šs Nin of the POUM, and others from the UGT and the Esquerra. The CNT, FAI, and the dissident Communists of the POUM pushed for as much collectivization as possible and for severe limits on private property. On the other side, the Esquerra, UGT, and PSUC, which combined Catalan nationalism with allegiance to the Third International, wanted less collectivization and more protection for the small industrialists and shopkeepers who were numerous in Catalonia. Paradoxically, a large number of these petty bourgeois joined the UGT and the PSUC because they considered that the two Marxist organizations constituted a needed counterweight to the revolutionary and collectivist tendencies of the CNT and because the Esquerra, the most likely political party of Catalan nationalists and petty bourgeois, was considered too weak to defend their interests.
The Decree on Collectivization of 24 October 1936 was a compromise of the various unions and political parties that composed the Catalan Left, but the decree clearly revealed the dominance of the CNT:
After the nineteenth of July the fascist bourgeoisie deserted its posts. . . . The abandoned enterprises could not remain without direction, and the workers decided to intervene and to create Control Committees. The council of the Generalitat had to authorize and orient what the workers accomplished spontaneously. . . .
For the collectivization of the firms to be successful, their development and growth must be aided. To this end, the Economic Council . . . will financially aid the collectives and will group our industry in large concentrations that will assure maximum output. . . . Former owners and managers who have technical and managerial capabilities . . . will serve the needs of the firm.
A factory council, named by workers in a general assembly, will be responsible for the management of the collectives.12
First, this decree implied that workers' control was a necessity because a large part of the bourgeoisie had fled. Second, although it paid homage to the "spontaneity" of collectivization by the workers, the edict asserted that the collectives had to be channeled toward "maximum output," "large concentrations," "growth," and "development." Third, the decree urged cooperation with technicians and former employers and therefore encouraged a continuation of the organization of work and the division of labor that existed before the Revolution. Finally, the revolutionary content of the edict was its legalization of workers' control. The workers themselves and their representatives would be responsible for managing the collectives.
If the decree was the outcome of a compromise among the various forces of the Catalan Left, its conception of collectivization and workers' control largely reflected the preponderance of the libertarian movement that still held political, police, and, of course, economic powers in October 1936. Juan F bregas, a CNT member who became president of the (Generalitat's) Economic Council, was instrumental in attaining this "greatest legal achievement of the libertarian movement."13 F bregas's quick ascent to power revealed a great deal concerning the economic thought of the CNT. He had joined the Confederaci¢n immediately after the attempted coup of the generals. Before the Revolution, he had been linked to the Esquerra and had been the director of the Institute of Economic Sciences of Barcelona; nonetheless, he loyally served the CNT in the Economic Council and thus earned the enmity of the Communists and some Catalan nationalists. In December 1936 he was replaced on the council by another anarchosyndicalist whose thought we have examined, Diego Abad de Santill n. F bregas's similar economic vision disclosed key aspects of the Spanish Revolution. The economist called for the rational reconstruction of the Spanish economy under the supervision of the technocrats whose cooperation was "necessary to acquire, at whatever cost."14 Like Santill n, F bregas advocated the formation of a network of councils that would orient production "under technical and scientific principles."
F bregas wanted easy credit to stimulate industry and to create what the Spanish economist called "national labor" (trabajo nacional), which would solve the problem of unemployment. The CNT economic advisor called for a "vast plan of public works," including roads, canals, dams, and artificial lakes: "We must declare loudly . . . that work is not a punishment but a pleasure. . . . It is the glorious time of the exaltation of work. We will transform work into the maximum exponent of true wealth, into the unique sign of social prestige, making it the greatest source of pride for emancipated workers."15 During the Spanish Revolution, anarchosyndicalism was an ideology of labor; this tenet helps to explain why a former bourgeois economist such as F bregas came to represent the CNT in positions of the greatest importance.
The CNT abandoned its antipolitical ideology not only to join the Generalitat but also to participate in the central government of the republic. In November 1936 four CNT leaders were named ministers in the government of Largo Caballero: Juan Garc¡a Oliver, Minister of Justice; Juan Peir¢, Industry; Federica Montseny, Health and Public Assistance; Juan L¢pez, Commerce. Libertarian participation in both the Generalitat and the central government ended shortly after the famous May Days of 1937 when CNT and FAI militants fought Communists and Republicans in the streets of Barcelona and other towns throughout Catalonia. This is not the place to describe in detail the political struggles and violent skirmishes between the libertarians and the Communists; they have been amply reported elsewhere. What is important for our purposes is the periodization, or the beginning and end, of workers' control in Barcelona. As we have seen, immediately after the failure of the military uprising in Barcelona, the Confederaci¢n occupied the most important political, economic, and police posts in the city. While other forces-Communist and Catalan nationalist-reorganized and gained strength, the CNT, although retaining its arms, began gradually to lose its political and police powers in Barcelona. Many, if not most, historians have focused on the decline of the CNT's political power and its withdrawal from both the Generalitat and the central government after May 1937; they have wedded the CNT's loss of political power to a collapse of its economic power in the factories that its militants had collectivized or controlled. In other words, consonant with the political perspective of most historians-whether Communist or anti-Communist, pro-CNT or anti-CNT, Stalinist or Trotskyist-the periodization of the collectives has been subordinated to the CNT's participation or nonparticipation in government.16 The end of the CNT's membership in both the central and Catalan governments, after the street fighting of May 1937, has therefore been identified with the successful counterrevolution against the Confederaci¢n's economic power in the factories that it controlled.
The identification of political and economic periodizations has some, but only limited, value. When forces opposed to the CNT-whether Communist or Republican-controlled the government, they probably withheld the foreign currencies and financial assistance that CNT factories needed to procure raw materials and machinery. After the CNT withdrew from politics in May 1937, Communist strength increased and large attacks took place on collectives in certain regions, notably Aragon. Nevertheless, in Barcelona, which was the CNT's strongest bastion as the CNT was undoubtedly its most important union, the Confederaci¢n's economic control of industry did not collapse when its enemies gained political power. Even with Republican and Soviet aid, the Catalan Communists would have had difficulty in eliminating the Catalan CNT, which may have had as many as 1,000,000 members in April 1937. In contrast, the Catalan UGT reported 475,000 members in January 1937.17
After the initial defeat of the pronunciamiento, the Confederaci¢n never regained the offensive but, often with the participation of the UGT, retained control of many of the largest industries in Barcelona until just before the end of the war. The Generalitat did gain preponderance in several industries, but its legislation was ignored in many others. Numerous articles in the libertarian press attested to the CNT's command of most collectives in Barcelona after May 1937. In November 1937 a CNT publication for the exclusive use of member unions stated that those who had attempted to destroy the Confederaci¢n had failed and that the CNT was successfully managing a great number of cooperatives and collectives and even cooperating with official economic organizations, including the Executive Commission of Agricultural Credit, Committee against Unemployment, Postal Savings Bank, and the Fuel Regulation Commission.18 The anarchosyndicalists also continued to occupy seats on the Generalitat's Economic Council, where they effectively opposed many Communist-inspired proposals. The CNT was able to remain influential in the key sector of the defense industries despite the Generalitat's increasing financial and legal intervention during the first year of the Revolution. Until the end of 1937 the Confederaci¢n actively resisted the attempt by the central government, backed by the Communists, to take more than nominal control of the Catalan war industries, where- acording to the CNT's own estimates-the union controlled 80 percent of the work force.19 During 1938, after the national government's Subsecretaria de armamento assumed control of the defense sector, the CNT was still able to place its members in the factories. The Communist technician M. Schwartzmann has confirmed the Confederaci¢n's tenacious hold on Barcelona industry after May 1937; in branches such as transportation and woodworking, CNT control was so monopolistic that in May 1938 the UGT complained of the persecution of its militants in these sectors.20 In April 1938 militants advised the dissolution of the Commission on Behalf of Prisoners and a reduction of the number of the Confederaci¢n's lawyers because the "CNT prisoners are few and soon all will leave jail."21 On 10 May 1938 the German anarchosyndicalist A. Souchy wrote in Solidaridad Obrera: "The base of economic life rests, in spite of everything and everybody, in the hands of workers' organizations."22 As late as October 1938 Juan Comorera, a PSUC leader, admitted the existence of two economies in Spain, one largely private and the other dominated by the CNT.23 A CNT militant insisted that despite the campaign against the collectives "the system of collectivization was deeply rooted in Catalan economic life . . . becoming the most solid base of our resistance in the domain of production."24 An anarchosyndicalist historian has called the preservation of CNT economic power a "miracle" produced by union "toughness," which "stopped the government in its tracks."25
Legislation often existed only on paper. In October 1937 Juan Fronjos , a Communist and the secretary general of the UGT, declared that "three great sectors"-republicans, Marxists, and anarchosyndicalists-were leading the struggle against "fascism."26 The UGT leader went on to complain that although the Decree on Collectivization required that the Generalitat's Economic Council name controllers, the collectives themselves were choosing them "in the great majority of cases." He protested that the Economic Council intervened only to endorse the workers' nominations. According to the union leader, this procedure resulted in an "intolerable farce" in which the controller was usually "only the plaything" of the collective and even acquiesced in its "illegal activities." Fronjos 's complaints cannot be dismissed as mere Communist propaganda since in the chemical industry, for example, the Generalitat's controllers either refused or were unable to fulfill their duties during much of the Revolution.27 As late as October 1937, the Generalitat's plan for a bank devoted to industrial development, although authorized by the Decree on Collectivizations, had not been enacted.
The Confederaci¢n could retain control in many collectivized and controlled firms because it possessed a variety of sources of income and influence in the revolutionary economy. At least in the first months of the Revolution and probably considerably afterwards, unions were more likely to receive urban rents (if paid) than were either landlords or governmental organizations.28 In addition, unions held a near monopoly on the labor market and collected dues from both the old and the many new members. Certain collectives also contributed to the unions' treasury, which retained considerable revenues even though local and national governments gradually consolidated their powers of taxation as the war continued.
Some historians have tied the decline of the supposed revolutionary fervor among its members to the CNT's loss of political and economic power and to the anarchosyndicalist leadership's decision to collaborate with other parties and unions in the government: they consider that the CNT constituency became increasingly estranged from its leaders because of the leaders' political cooperation with former adversaries.29 In their view, the rank and file were especially concerned to put the Confederaci¢n's Zaragoza program into practice. From July to October 1936, the "libertarian and collectivist economy" was able to "develop autogestion without obstacles."30 Thereafter, the historians argue, a "spontaneous" and "militant" base of members, devoted to democracy and workers' control in the factory, was prevented from realizing its goals by an increasingly bureaucratic leadership. The proletariat's willingness to sacrifice receded as military objectives took priority over the social revolution.31
Yet even in the first days of the Revolution, and despite a general 15 percent pay raise, workers may not have pursued autogestion with such eagerness and enthusiasm. Indeed, after 19 July, anarchosyndicalist newspapers and radio broadcasts continually called for workers both to return confiscated cars and return to work:
It is urgent that all [bus] workers belonging to the section justify their absence from work. [We] notify those [Hispano-Olivetti workers] who are illegitimately absent that sanctions will be applied to whomever deserves them.32
In one large metallurgical factory, the return of blue-collar workers was "gradual" during the two weeks that followed 19 July.33 On 15 August the Control Committee of public transportation demanded that all workers justify their absences with a medical certificate.34 Five days later a committee member and a physician were assigned to inspect the ill in their homes. The worker- managed power company dispatched a physician to a worker's house for the same purpose.35 In transportation, dismissals for absences without permission were "common" in the first weeks of the conflict.36 A POUM printer reported that his workmates had to "hunt down" their absent colleagues and convince them to continue to labor.37
According to one witness, the Generalitat's decision to pay wages for days lost because of the Revolution "corrupted" the workers. This measure, which was supposed to last only several weeks, became permanent, and a number of factory councils continued to receive money even though their firms produced nothing. The author claimed that laziness and idleness were encouraged and that "some sectors of the working class" became complacent.38 The Confederaci¢n considered the Generalitat's decree establishing a forty-hour week "ruinous, suicidal, and counterrevolutionary"; the reduction of work hours and increase of wages amounted to a "serious mistake."39 One Catalan power station celebrated the arrival of the Revolution with extended feasting; during one month the workers in Camarasa "consumed 270 bottles of 'Castell del Remei' wine, 40 chickens, 20 geese, and other items."40
Yet some did sacrifice to serve the cause. In the Casa Singer, which had a long tradition of CNT militancy, fifty of one hundred workers volunteered for fortification work with "great enthusiasm and revolutionary spirit." An undetermined number of workers in the power industry asked to labor overtime for the war effort. Solidaridad Obrera reported "Sunday work volunteers."41 Revolutionary and patriotic beliefs motivated an unknown number to accept work.
Many others, though, displayed only a superficial commitment to the cause. In December 1936, eight hundred construction workers at Flix offered to dig trenches at the front. When their site was bombarded several months later, the workers deserted or fled.42 The unions often had to threaten the conscripted to ensure that they would obey mobilization orders. In February 1937, UGT phone workers were certain that a number of comrades would not report for military training. Several months earlier fortification work had become "obligatory" for telephone workers.43 The CNT-UGT managers of the power industry agreed to pay a month's salary for each of their workers age eighteen to twenty who were in military training. They nevertheless stipulated that once the training was completed, the recruits must go to the front "without any excuse."44 Even Prime Minister Aza¤a noted that "to stimulate recruitment, each soldier received ten pesetas per day, which was five times more than the usual wages of Spanish troops."45
When the Republican army had almost one million men, soldiers' pay became an "exorbitant charge" for the governmental treasury. In November 1936 in a large Barcelona collective, not even one of the mostly UGT-affiliated workers was listed in the military; in July 1937, 16 of 280 were in the armed forces; in January l938, the total was 45 of 318.46 By 1938 many recruits from Barcelona were discouraged, as one of their officers, a libertarian commissar, reported: In this training camp there are 470 recruits; 85 percent belong to the CNT. Seventy percent are manual workers, 15 percent peasants, and 15 percent shop assistants . . . from the Barcelona region. . . . They come demoralized and without enthusiasm, constantly worried about their families whom they have left without means during this economic crisis. . . . Many are without shoes and complain about it. . . . They are aware of the economic favoritism shown to bureaucrats and police forces. . . . They always say, "If there have to be sacrifices, they should be equal for everyone."
They object to insignificant things, for example, a late distribution of tobacco, a meal without wine, or hard bread. . . . They are really bothered by having to join the army to fight.47 Many workers tried to avoid military duty, and in 1938 it also became difficult to recruit officers from libertarian ranks.48
The declining military fortunes of the Second Republic certainly reinforced this lack of commitment, but it appeared almost immediately after the conflict began. At that time most Barcelonan workers belonged to no union; in July 1936 they flocked into the CNT and, to a lesser extent, the UGT. The social base of these two unions differed somewhat: the Confederaci¢n had more blue-collar members than the UGT, which tended to attract white-collar workers, technicians, and small businessmen. Although some manual laborers and blue-collar workers did enter the UGT, this minority union was generally more popular among workers who were literate and those who had technical training. It should be underlined that many workers joined the unions not for ideological reasons but because life in revolutionary Barcelona was quite difficult without a union card. To eat a meal in a collective kitchen, to acquire welfare aid, to find or keep a job, to attend a technical training center, to obtain housing, to be admitted to a clinic or hospital, to travel outside of Barcelona, and so forth, a union card was often desirable, if not necessary. Union membership and connections were ironically the only way opportunists could avoid military service, by being declared "indispensable" in the workplace.49
According to the CNT's figures, it represented only 30 percent of the Catalan industrial workers in May 1936, down from 60 percent in 1931.50 "Tens of thousands" of workers with little "class consciousness" joined the two unions in search of social protection and stable employment.51 On 4 August 1936, for example, several weeks after the outbreak of revolution, a majority of members of the union of workers at dog races held a general assembly. One member reported that many of the affiliated believed they needed to join either the CNT or the UGT "in order to defend our interests."52 Another argued that the CNT offered "more guarantees for the workers since it controlled the majority of entertainment workers." A certain Cuadrado insisted that the CNT had always defended the workers, but another objected that the Confederaci¢n might suspend the dog races. A participant addressed this fear by asserting that there was also an equal danger that the UGT would cancel the races. At the end of the discussion the assembly voted "unanimously" to join the CNT. "After discussions with managers of both unions," workers who specialized in insulating and waterproofing materials also decided to join the CNT because the Confederaci¢n's construction affiliate was more experienced in the workers' speciality.53 Other unions voted to adhere to the UGT for similar reasons. The president of a union representing market laborers suggested that "it was advantageous and useful" to join a national organization, and the majority agreed to enter the UGT.54 A CNT manager of the power company thought that "one of the principal errors of the unions was to force the workers to join one of them. We are not really sure about many of the huge number of new members, although it's not worthwhile to discuss this outside of the union."55 In June 1937 H. Rdiger, a representative in Barcelona of the revived First International, wrote that before the Revolution the CNT had only 150,000 to 175,000 members in Catalonia.56 In the months following the outbreak of the war, Catalan CNT membership jumped to nearly 1,000,000, of which "four-fifths are, thus, new people. We cannot consider a large part of these people revolutionaries. You could take any union as an example of this. Many of these new members could be in the UGT." Rdiger concluded that the CNT could not be an "organic democracy." In the rival union, the situation was little different: one UGT official asserted that the Catalan federation of the UGT had 30,000 members before 19 July and 350,000 to 400,000 afterwards; he recommended a new organization of the union since many affiliates lacked energy and experience.57 A number of CNT unions discouraged the election of new members to posts of responsibility in the organization or in collectives unless they received unanimous approval. Therefore, this large influx of adherents to Catalan unions and political parties was not simply an indication of ideological conversion to anarchosyndicalism, socialism, or communism but an attempt by rank-and-file workers to survive as best they could in a revolutionary situation.
During the Revolution, many workers were reluctant to attend union meetings or, of course, to pay union dues.58 One collective, Construcciones mec nicas, changed its plans to hold assemblies on Sundays since "no one would attend" and instead chose Thursdays.59 In fact, activists often claimed that the only way to get workers to appear at assemblies was to hold them during working hours and therefore at the expense of production. Twenty-nine of seventy-four workers in a UGT-dominated clothing firm attended an assembly in October 1937.60 In one large metallurgical concern, only 25 percent of the personnel participated actively in assemblies.61 The most active workers were over thirty and had technical ability and at least five years' seniority. Frequently, assemblies merely ratified decisions taken by smaller groups of militants or technicians. Some workers felt coerced and were reluctant to speak, let alone protest, during meetings. Even when the rank and file attended, they often arrived late and left early. In construction, the UGT Building Union warned that if delegates did not attend meetings and if members did not fulfill their duties, their union cards would be withdrawn. He meant, in effect, that they would be fired, a serious threat in an industry characterized by high unemployment, especially when joblessness in Barcelona was aggravated still further by an influx of refugees from other parts of Spain.
Even supposedly committed militants often missed meetings. Members holding positions of responsibility were warned.
The comrades of the Control Committees must consider themselves workers no different from others and are thus obligated to work. They are able to meet as much as they wish but always after working hours. . . . When a comrade-whoever he is and whatever position he holds-sabotages our labor, he will be immediately expelled from the workplace.62 UGT telephone personnel criticized working women, the majority of whom had joined the union after 19 July, as never having attended even one assembly. Female workers remained even more apolitical than their male colleagues, perhaps because of lesser interest in social promotion and little representation in the unions. Working women were burdened with both wage labor and domestic chores, such as Saturday shopping. Some activists unsuccessfully proposed fines for members of either sex who did not appear at meetings. Other militants threatened sanctions.63 Apathy and indifference contributed to the disintegration of workers' democracy and the reappearance of a managerial elite during the Spanish Revolution. The new elite of union militants employed both old and new techniques of coercion to make workers labor harder and produce more. As will be seen, statist, medical, and unionist bureaucracies expanded in response to workers' resistance. For example, early in the Revolution employees and security guards of the Barcelonan newspaper La Vanguardia met at a tavern to drink and gamble during working hours. To end such "irregularities," local union officials-like the national authorities-proposed issuing "identity cards" and imposing rules against leaving the workplace. In another case, the UGT headquarters needed to send out inspectors to affiliated unions to collect dues because an average of only one-third of UGT members in Barcelona met their obligations.64
The managing class of union militants, who must be distinguished from mere union members, was largely responsible for the collectivization of the Barcelonan factories. Assisted by skilled workers and technicians, they controlled the daily functioning of the industries. The militants of both the CNT and the UGT were, of course, influenced by the economic thought of their respective organizations. The CNT demanded workers' control, which the factory councils and the unions were to coordinate, whereas the UGT desired nationalization and governmental control. Nevertheless, despite these differences over the forms of decision making that the new order would adopt, that is, the choice between state or union control of production, the organizations were in basic agreement concerning industrial goals. Both advocated concentration of the many small factories and workshops that dotted the Barcelonan industrial landscape, standardization of the variety of industrial products and equipment, modernization of tools and capital goods, and establishment of an independent Spanish economy, free from foreign control. In brief, the unions wanted to rationalize the means of production in a Spanish national framework.
The tasks the unions wanted to perform were often ones the bourgeoisies of more advanced nations had completed. As we have seen, the Spanish and Catalan bourgeoisies had been unwilling or unable to rationalize, modernize, standardize, and free the economy from foreign control. The Spanish Revolution in Barcelona meant an attempt by working-class organizations to accomplish these goals. Collective control was instituted to develop industries that had stagnated under the regime of private property. In this respect, the Spanish Revolution resembled the Russian, where organizations claiming to represent the working class took over the privately owned productive forces from a bourgeoisie that had not developed a strong industrial economy. In Spain, as in the Soviet Union, the effort to rationalize the productive forces was accompanied by technocratic thought and methods propagated by F bregas, Santill n, and other CNT and anarchosyndicalist thinkers. Like Soviet planners, the Spanish revolutionaries desired, at least in theory, to build enterprises on a large scale. They often employed the same methods, such as Taylorism, highly preferential treatment for managers and technicians, and strict control of rank-and-file workers. Certain CNT unions even copied the Stakhanovism of the Bolsheviks in order to promote production.
In another fundamental aspect, internationalism, the Spanish and Russian Revolutions exhibited important similarities. Although Marxist and anarchosyndicalist ideologies shared the cosmopolitanism of the First International and called for a worldwide revolution and solidarity with the proletariat of all nations, this theoretical internationalism conflicted with nationalist practice. Both revolutions attempted to free their industries from foreign capital and control and to develop the productive forces within the national framework. Despite its federalism, the ideology of the CNT called for a strong and economically independent Spain. Solidaridad Obrera declared in May 1937, Spain for the Spanish and Our Revolution must be Spanish. Its Madrid paper affirmed that libertarians were the true patriots since they defended the Spanish Revolution, which would "unleash our capacity for work and free Spain from its colony status."65 In May 1937 Juan L¢pez, the CNT Minister of Commerce in the Republican government, declared that he had "aspired to attain the economic unity of Spain."66 L¢pez attacked the "foreign invasion of Spain" and demanded "national independence." According to the CNT daily, the Spanish Revolution would produce "an ethnic and psychological transformation that has been, for many years, in the heart and soul of the race (raza)." A CNT journalist proposed a plan of "national reconstruction": "What is produced in Asturias does not belong to Asturias. What is made in a certain municipality does not belong to that municipality. . . . We must guarantee the consumption of everyone, the equal right of all to consume."67
Juan Peir¢, a Catalan himself, was hostile to Catalanist demands for regional economic control and instead desired a unified national economy. He sharply criticized the Generalitat and the Basque government for hindering and even sabotaging the national economy. In 1939 Peir¢ demanded a "national xenophobia," which would inspire all classes to rebuild the Spanish economy.68 After the war, the anarchosyndicalist leader asserted, Spain would pursue the "ideal" of economic self- sufficiency. Another CNT minister from Catalonia, Federica Montseny, who was the first woman ever to hold a ministerial post in Spain, believed that "we are the true nationalists. We are a people . . . who lead all nations." A. Schapiro, a prominent official of the First International, sharply condemned the "panegyric of revolutionary nationalism" and warned his comrades against "chauvinism."69 During the Revolution other foreign anarchosyndicalists criticized the CNT's nationalism and "chauvinism."70 Helmut Rdiger, a German anarchosyndicalist, judged that the nationalism of the Confederaci¢n had greatly harmed the Spanish libertarian movement.71 It should be noted that this nationalism was further exacerbated (but certainly not created) by the failure of Western democracies to aid the Spanish Republic and by anti-Stalinists' fears that the one great power that did help-the Soviet Union-was interfering in Spain's internal affairs.
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
Garc¡a Oliver's reforming zeal extended to the penal code and the prison system. Torture was forbidden and replaced by work: normal labor with weekly monetary bonuses and a day off per week when the prisoner's conduct merits it. If this is not enough to motivate him, his good conduct will be measured by vouchers. Fifty-two of these vouchers will mean a year of good conduct and thus a year of liberty. These years can be added up . . . and thus a sentence of thirty years can be reduced to eight, nine, or ten years.73
The abolition of torture has usually accompanied the modernization of a prison system. Modern justice has been ashamed to use corporal punishment, and the modern prison has acted principally on the spirit of a prisoner, not the body. Anarchosyndicalists like Garc¡a Oliver believed that a prisoner's soul and values must be changed in ways that would benefit the productivist society of the future. To a great degree, the labor camps were an extreme, but logical, expression of Spanish anarchosyndicalism. It was in the labor camps that the CNT's "society of the producers" encountered F bregas's "exaltation of work." 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.78
Most 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 The art of the Revolution reflected its problems and expressed its values and morality. The clearest expression of this art were the posters of the Spanish Left-Communist, Socialist, and anarchosyndicalist. The major organizations gave considerable time and money to produce this propaganda even after paper and other resources became scarce and expensive. Many of the poster artists had been active in advertising before the war, and they worked not for one organization but for many. For example, an official of the Professional Designers' Union made placards for the CNT, UGT, PSUC, and the Generalitat. His union even produced posters for the POUM, the dissident Communist organization. An ecumenical style emerged that, despite slight thematic differences, portrayed both the workers and the productive forces in nearly identical images. Even as anarchosyndicalists and Communists killed each other on the streets of Barcelona in May 1937, the aesthetic unity of the Popular Front persisted. Ideological disputes and power struggles did not prevent competing organizations from accepting similar representations of their supposed constituencies.
In these posters, which greatly resemble the style of Soviet socialist realism, workers were either working, fighting, or dying for the cause. These men and, just as important, women-for in the Spanish Revolution women and men were theoretically equal in war and work-always struggled heroically and untiringly for the victory of the Revolution or the Second Republic in farms, factories, and on battlefields. In fact, the sex of the subjects in many posters was nearly indeterminate, and what was important was neither the qualities nor the character of the individual portrayed but his or her function as soldier or worker. Spanish socialist realism expressed the progressive "masculinization of the iconography of the workers' movement."82 One CNT sign, made to combat pessimism and defeatism, pictured two figures, a man and a woman, who looked alike. Both possessed huge forearms and biceps, broad shoulders, and very small heads, suggesting that it was physical, not mental, effort that was required of them. The figures were almost identical except that one had longer hair and inconspicuous breasts, the only hints of femininity in the image. One detail distinguished the other figure: rolled-up sleeves, an easily recognizable symbol of manual labor. This art was solely concerned with the constructive or destructive capacity of its subjects who were simultaneously its objects. The artists deemphasized differences between soldier and producer, defense and civilian industries as much as between woman and man. One PSUC poster identified industries of war and peacetime. In the picture the long chimneys of the latter repeated the shape of the large cannons of the former. A famous CNT-FAI poster conveyed the same message. In the foreground a soldier firing his rifle complemented a worker in the background harvesting wheat with a sickle, itself a symbol of labor in socialist-realist iconography. The figures would have been indistinguishable except by their implements and positions. Vivid reds and blacks, the colors of the anarchist movement, strengthened the forms of the powerful workers. The caption read, Comrade, work and fight for the revolution. Artists never depicted the workers and soldiers of the posters as tired, hungry, or ill. The means of production-the factories, farms, and workshops-no matter how ugly, were idealized equally with the brave, strong, and virile men and women who lived and died for the cause. This portrait of the productive forces reflected the Left's productivism and its desires for modernization. Both machines and humankind were heroic and larger than life. Given the Marxist and anarchosyndicalist conception of the worker, it is hardly surprising that revolutionary art would stress her or his productive capacities. These ideologies, which glorified labor and the laborer, consequently portrayed the female and male wage earners as muscular and powerful beings capable of creating objects both for consumption and for the struggle. Thus the importance of the arm and particularly the hand, a symbol of homo faber and the focus of many compositions. Interpreting the posters helps us both to understand how Marxists and anarchosyndicalists literally imagined the working class and how revolutionaries responded to workers' actual behavior during the civil war and Revolution. Spanish socialist realism attempted to persuade the workers to fight, work, and sacrifice more. It was propaganda that was always humorless and sometimes menacing. The art of the Frente popular aimed to diminish workers' resistance to work, which was, as we shall see, one of the most pressing problems for the entire Left. Barcelonan workers were known to miss work on holidays, particularly during the Christmas-New Year's season. The PSUC responded to such absenteeism with a poster that pictured a soldier whose bayonet was slicing through Saturday on a calendar. The poster's caption called for the end of fiestas and demanded that a new "war calendar" be imposed. Another picture demanded that May Day become, not a holiday, but a day of "intensification of production."
Spanish militants sometimes equated excessive drinking and laziness with sabotage and even fascism. One CNT poster, which was made in Barcelona for the Departamento de orden p£blico de Aragon, pictured a corpulent man smoking a cigarette and comfortably resting in what appeared to be the countryside. The colors of this piece were unlike those of most other posters; the figure was not red or black but yellow, reflecting the tones of sunny Spain. At the bottom was printed the caption, The lazy man is a fascist. Another CNT poster, made again for comrades in Aragon, displayed a man who was also smoking a cigarette, a symbol, one may speculate, of indifference and insolence since committed workers and soldiers were not shown smoking. This individual was surrounded by tall wine bottles, and the poster contained the caption, A drunk is a parasite. Let's eliminate him. This was particularly tough talk during a period when threats of elimination did not always remain oral, and work camps for enemies and the apathetic were in operation. Both Marxists and anarchosyndicalists were hostile toward non-producers.
A number of posters addressed the problem of workers' indifference. One showed a strong red figure who was digging the earth with a shovel and who asked laborers to join voluntary work brigades (many of which became obligatory during 1937). Another, from Madrid, requested disabled veterans to aid the fight by working in factories and thereby releasing as yet uninjured workers for combat. A third contained a very direct appeal: Worker, Work and We shall win; it showed a bare-chested red figure with a well-defined muscular torso, blacksmith or metalworker, underneath whom a row of soldiers was firing their weapons at the enemy.
The artists of the Revolution also developed a genre of posters for the literacy campaign. This theme reflected the poverty of Spanish education, the high rates of illiteracy among workers, and the Left's need for trained workers and cadres. A modernist poster showed a soldier in red and black with several yellow books and contained the caption, Anarchist books are weapons against fascism. The theme of books as weapons, which blended nicely with the utilitarianism of the Left's literacy campaign, echoed in another poster that showed a blindfolded soldier holding a large book. Underneath the fighter was inscribed, Illiteracy blinds the spirit. Soldier, learn! The relation of education to fighting paralleled that of work to fighting. There was a rapprochement, if not an identification, of the two activities. The literacy campaign posters, like those representing the means of production, were modernist. One striking promotion of the anarchosyndicalist publications Tierra y Libertad and Tiempos nuevos combined soldiers, rifles, factory chimneys, newspapers, and books in a sophisticated cubist composition.
Spanish socialist realism was not exempt from what Nikita Khrushchev once called "the cult of personality." Massive representations of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin appeared in public places. The libertarians replied with photographs, sketches, and portraits of Durruti, whose image seems to have been as pervasive in the anarchosyndicalist press as that of Stalin was in Communist publications. On the anniversary of the death of the legendary anarchosyndicalist leader, who died on the Madrid front early in the war, CNT and FAI publications were filled with tens of articles and pictures of the fallen hero. Tierra y Libertad, the review of the fa¡stas, even included a somewhat sentimental essay entitled, "Durruti: A Giant with a Heart of Gold," even though before his death the libertarian martyr had advocated mobilizing the "infinity of loafers and libertines in the rear."83 The anarchosyndicalists developed their own form of visual expression that differed little from the Marxist variety. This similarity reflected shared values-a glorification of labor, a respect for the development of the means of production, and the vision of the worker as producer. When workers in the collectives did not conform to this productivist conception, the CNT and the UGT alike responded by creating persuasive and coercive images that were designed to convince them to work harder. This art should be seen as reflecting the views of the militants, not working-class culture in its entirety. Indeed, it aimed to combat a deep current in the everyday life of Barcelonan wage earners- workers' resistance to work and reluctance to fight. To estimate the posters' effects on the behavior of Barcelona's working class is unfortunately difficult, if not impossible: vandals or graffiti artists avant la lettre tore down or covered over many posters as soon as they appeared on the walls. As yet little evidence exists that the socialist realism of the Frente popular boosted production or increased combativeness.
The nature of the Spanish Revolution can only be partially discovered in the political categories of most historians. By concentrating on the political struggles among the CNT, PSUC, and other organizations and the consequent counterrevolution of May 1937, historians have distorted the periodization of workers' control in Barcelona and have not fully explored the more fundamental question of the significance of the Revolution itself. Yet the art of the Revolution, its labor camps, and its vision of the future revealed its essence: the development and rationalization of the means of production of the nation. Everything else yielded to this central goal, and in the process workers' democracy disappeared, if it had ever existed. The following chapters will examine how the union militants developed the productive forces in Barcelona and the problems that they encountered among the workers whom they claimed to represent.
Notes 1. Jos"š Peirats, La CNT en la revoluci¢n espa¤ola (Paris, 1971), 1:160. Felix Morrow (Revolution and Counterrevolution in Spain [New York, 1974]) has remarked on the similarity between the Bolshevik program of 1917 and that of the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias. Unlike the Bolsheviks, however, the CNT and the FAI ended up sharing power with other political parties and unions.
2. Tierra y Libertad, 10 September 1936. On the Church, see Frances Lannon, "The Church's Crusade against the Republic," in Revolution and War in Spain, 1931-1939, ed. Paul Preston (London, 1984); Enric Ucelay Da Cal, La Catalunya populista: Imatge, cultura i pol¡tica en l'etapa republicana, 1931-1939 (Barcelona, 1982), p. 140; Mary Vincent, "The Spanish Church and the Frente Popular" (Paper presented at Popular Fronts Conference, University of Southampton, April 1986); Hilari Raguer i Su¤er, La uni¢ democr...tica de Catalunya i el seu temps (1931-1939) (Montserrat, 1976).
3. Pierre Vilar, La guerre d'Espagne, 1936-1939 (Paris, 1986), p. 24.
4. Solidaridad Obrera, 23 July 1936; Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War (Princeton, 1967), p. 289.
5. Josep Massot i Muntaner, Aproximaci¢ a la hist"¢ria religiosa de la Catalunya contempor...nia (Barcelona, 1973), p. 128. See also Vilar, La guerre, p. 108; the author adds, "Il faut remonter ... la r"švolution fran"¡aise pour trouver l'"šquivalent." For a recent study, Jos"š M. S nchez, The Spanish Civil War as a Religious Tragedy (Notre Dame, 1987), p. 8.
6. Agustin Souchy and Paul Folgare, Colectivizaciones: La obra constructiva de la revoluci¢n espa¤ola (Barcelona, 1977), p. 75; Direction des affaires politiques et commerciales, 3 November 1936, 244, AD.
7. Junta, 16 January 1937, 1204, AS; Caldereros en cobre, 9 September 1936, 1428, AS; Junta de secciones, 24 September 1936, 1446, AS.
8. Antoni Castells i Dur n, "La colectivizaci¢n-socializaci¢n de la industria y los servicios en Barcelona ciudad y provincia" (Manuscript, Barcelona, Centre d'estudis hist"¢rics internacionals, 1986), p. 131.
9. See files in Generalitat 240, AS.
10. Comit"š, 26 November 1936, 182, AS.
11. Although this firm depended on the contracts awarded by the CNT, the personnel opposed collectivization (Informe, contables UGT-CNT, 5 March 1938, 1219, AS).
12. For the text in Catalan, see Albert P"šrez Bar¢, 30 meses de colectivismo en Catalu¤a (1936-1939) (Barcelona, 1974), pp. 193-200; for a contested Spanish version, Souchy and Folgare, Colectivizaciones, pp. 36-38.
13. C"šsar M. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles y el poder, 1869-1969 (Paris, 1972), p. 103.
14. Juan P. F bregas, Les finances de la revoluci¢ (Barcelona, 1937), p. 87.
15. Juan P. F bregas, Los factores econ¢micos de la revoluci¢n espa¤ola (Barcelona, 1937).
16. See Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York, 1969), pp. 72-158; Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Revolution, the Left, and the Struggle for Power during the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 1979); John Brademas, Anarcosindicalismo y revoluci¢n en Espa¤a (1930-1937), trans. Joaqu¡n Romero Maura (Barcelona, 1974); Carlos Sempr£n-Maura, Revoluci¢n y contrarrevoluci¢n en Catalu¤a, 1936-1937, trans. Julia Escobar (Barcelona, 1974); James W. Cortada, ed., A City in War: American Views on Barcelona and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (Wilmington, Del., 1985).
17. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles, p. 223; Butlett¡ interior de la Uni¢ general de treballadors, January 1937. These figures, especially those of the UGT, must be used with caution.
18. Bolet¡n del Comit"š nacional de la CNT para exclusivo uso de los sindicatos, 1 November 1937; Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles, p. 225. On the Generalitat's formal control, see Jos"š Arias Velasco, La hacienda de la Generalidad, 1931-1938 (Barcelona, 1977), p. 211.
19. De Companys a Indalecio Prieto: Documentaci¢n sobre las industrias de guerra en Catalu¤a (Buenos Aires, 1939), pp. 77-91. The defense sector was obviously a bastion of power for whichever organization controlled it, and its workers had privileged access to food supplies.
20. L'industrie de guerre de la r"špublique espagnole, box 54, Burnett Bolloten Collection, Hoover Institution; UGT sindicato de madera, 6 May 1938, 1411, AS.
21. Informe al comit"š ejecutivo, 23 April 1938, 1084, AS.
22. Solidaridad Obrera, 10 May 1938.
23. Ram¢n Tamames, La rep£blica, la era de Franco (Madrid, 1980), p. 310.
24. Solidaridad Obrera, 11 November 1938.
25. Peirats, La CNT, 2:173.
26. Joan Fronjos..., La missi¢ dels treballadors i la dels sindicats en la nova organitzaci¢ industrial (Barcelona, 1937), p. 5.
27. Actes de reuni¢ del consell general de la ind£stria qu¡mica, Generalitat 252, AS.
28. The Generalitat had decreed a 50 percent reduction in rents and wanted to restrict union control of urban property (Josep Tarradellas, L'obra financera de la Generalitat de Catalunya [Barcelona, 1938], pp. 42-44).
29. Walter Tauber, "Les tramways de Barcelone collectivis"šs pendant la r"švolution espagnole, 1936- 1939," Bulletin d'information, Fondation internationale d'"študes historiques et sociales (March, 1977): 14.
30. Castells, "Colectivizaci¢n," p. 74.
31. Walther L. Bernecker, Anarchismus und Brgerkrieg: Zur Geschichte der Soziale Revolution im Spanien, 1936-1939 (Hamburg, 1978), pp. 234, 245, 254; Walther L. Bernecker, Colectividades y revoluci¢n social: El anarquismo en la guerra espa¤ola, 1936-1939, trans. Gustau Mu¤oz (Barcelona, 1982), p. 76.
32. Solidaridad Obrera, 26, 27, 28 July 1936; Tauber, "Tramways," p. 25.
33. Anna Monjo and Carme Vega, Els treballadors i la guerra civil (Barcelona, 1986), p. 44.
34. Tauber, "Tramways," p. 39.
35. Comit"š central de gas i electricitat, 19 August 1936, 182, AS.
36. Tauber, "Tramways," p. 38.
37. Adolfo Bueso, Recuerdos de un cenetista (Barcelona, 1978), 2:162.
38. P"šrez Bar¢, 30 meses, p. 46.
39. Quoted in Bernecker, Colectividades, p. 315; Solidaridad Obrera, 2 June 1937.
40. Comit"š, 12 November 1936, 182, AS.
41. Al Sindicato, 18 February 1937, 1446, AS; Comit"š, 4 January 1937, 182, AS; Solidaridad Obrera, 15 May 1937.
42. Comit"š, 2 and 16 March 1937, 181, AS.
43. Reuni¢n de junta, 23 February 1204, AS; Acta de asamblea, 21 February 1937, 469, AS; Reuni¢n, organizaci¢n telef¢nica, 1170, AS.
44. Comit"š, 16 March 1937, 181, AS.
45. Manuel Aza¤a, Obras completas (Mexico City, 1967), 3:488.
46. United Shoe, Generalitat 252, AS.
47. Informe, 22 June 1938, 9, Leg. 18, AS.
48. Monjo and Vega, Els treballadors, p. 156; Al Sindicato, 29 January 1938, 9, Leg. 18, AS. See also the concluding remarks of Michael Alpert, El ej"šrcito republicano en la guerra civil (Paris, 1977), pp. 299-335.
49. Letters from militants in 933 and other carpetas, AS; on the legitimacy of "indispensable" status in a metallurgical factory, see Trefiler¡as (n.d.), 887, AS.
50. Alberto Balcells, Crisis econ¢mica y agitaci¢n social en Catalu¤a de 1930 a 1936 (Barcelona, 1971), p. 198.
51. P"šrez Bar¢, 30 meses, p. 47.
52. The following information is from Actas de sindicato de trabajadores de can¢dromos, 861, AS.
53. 18 October 1936, 1322, AS.
54. Societat de mo"¡os, 20 September 1936, 1170, AS.
55. Comit"š, 17 October 1938, 182, AS.
56. H. Rdiger, "Materiales para la discusi¢n sobre la situaci¢n espa¤ola en el pleno de la AIT," 8 May 1937, Rudolf Rocker Archives, 527-30, IISH.
57. Acta de asamblea (n.d.), 469, AS.
58. CNT Mar¡tima, 7 August 1937; Bolet¡n del Sindicato de la industria de la edificaci¢n, madera y decoraci¢n, 10 October 1937; Sidero-Metalurgia, September 1937.
59. Acta de asamblea ordinaria, 4 December 1936, PC.
60. See report, 1219, AS.
61. Monjo and Vega, Els treballadors, pp. 91-92; Anna Monjo and Carme Vega, "Les col.lectivitzacions industrials a Barcelona durant la guerra civil," L'Aven"¡, no. 70 (April 1984): 37.
62. Asamblea general extraordinaria, sindicato de artes gr ficas CNT, 18 October 1936, 1204, AS. At the same meeting a motion was presented to require members to purchase the union's journal so it "would be successful"; the motion failed, perhaps because the union press lacked support among the rank and file.
63. Acta, 21 February 1937, 469, AS; Acta, 22 August 1937, 1404, AS.
64. Reuni¢n de junta, 2 October 1936, 1204, AS; Comit"š ejecutivo, 10 December 1937, 501, AS.
65. See J. Garc¡a Pradas, Antifascismo proletario: Tesis, ambiente, t ctica (Madrid, 1938?), 1:24.
66. Juan L¢pez, Seis meses en el ministerio de comercio: Conferencia pronunciada el 27 mayo 1937 (Valencia, 1937), p. 14; Jordi Sabater, Anarquisme i catalanisme: La CNT i el fet nacional catal... durant la guerra civil (Barcelona, 1986), p. 55.
67. M. Cardona Rossell, Aspectos econ¢micos de nuestra revoluci¢n (Barcelona, 1937), p. 13.
68. Juan Peir¢, Problemas y cintarazos (Rennes, 1946), pp. 124-25, 53; Sabater, Anarquisme, pp. 55, 63.
69. A. Schapiro, "National-Anarchisme," Le Combat syndicaliste, 11 June 1937, Rudolf Rocker Archives, 566, IISH.
70. See CNT/AIT circulars, "Nacional-Anarquismo," in ibid. The CNT was not exempt from a xenophobia that occasionally degenerated into a rather familiar antisemitism. Solidaridad Obrera, 31 January 1937, accused Franco of looking like a Jew and criticized "Jewish plutocrats" and financiers of working with Hitler. In May 1938 when Ben-Krimo, a Sephardic Jew, asked the CNT to aid persecuted Jews, he received a very cold response from Mariano V zquez, the secretary of the national committee. V zquez refused to open Spain's doors "to all the Jews who wish to come here. It is impossible because it would undoubtedly be one of the most counterrevolutionary decisions that we could take. We are sure that [admission of the Jews] would mean the immediate revival and strengthening of capitalism and the old exploitation" (See the exchange of letters in 811, AS).
71. Helmut Rdiger, El anarcosindicalismo en la revoluci¢n espa¤ola (Barcelona, 1938), p. 7.
72. CNT Mar¡tima, 11 September 1937.
73. Solidaridad Obrera, 15 September 1937.
74. Ibid., 14 September 1937.
75. Comit"š de serveis correccionals, 14 January 1937, Generalitat, leg. 25, AS.
76. Solidaridad Obrera, 31 December 1936.
77. Lorenzo, Los anarquistas espa¤oles, p. 124.
78. Luis L¢pez de Medrano, 986 d¡as en el infierno (Madrid, 1939), pp. 178-84. This author's opinion cannot always be taken at face value; at one point in his tirade against the Popular Front, he claims that Guernica was destroyed by "Red Basque separatists allied with criminals of the CNT."
79. Motiu, 24-30 July 1937, Generalitat 69, AS.
80. Files in 352, AS; the following statistics are from Estances dels reclosos, Generalitat 88, AS. See also A los compa¤eros, 26 January 1938, 1446, AS.
81. See files in 615, AS.
82. Eric Hobsbawm, Workers: Worlds of Labor (New York, 1984), p. 87. See also Carmen Grimau, El cartel republicano en la guerra civil (Madrid, 1979), p. 208, for images of women.
83. Tierra y Libertad, 20 November 1937; Henri Paechter, Espagne, 1936-1937 (Paris, 1986), p. 110.
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