Anarchism and Workers' Self-Management in Revolutionary Spain. Frank Mintz
The CNT outlook itself explains the impact.
The ideological essence of syndicalism
In labor organisations whose members are not entirely driven by their bellies, there is, as in everything in life, a material part and a separate essential, spiritual or ideological part, call it what you will. If only the material part grows, to wit, the pursuit of more money and reduced hours, it will never be anything more than a sort of an aperitif or stomach-liner and an imitation of the miller’s donkey or the ‘carousel’ pony. Meaning that after several centuries of dogged struggle, they will remain what they were the day they started out: a mass of exploited wage-slaves barely able to cover their most basic needs. And this must necessarily be the case: the worker is producer and consumer, and unless a radical attack is mounted upon the unjust right of private property, which allows some to lay hands upon what others produce, rendering economic equality—the foundation of harmony and human brotherhood and the fountain of all true freedom and justice—impossible, all the money he earns as a producer will promptly be wrested from him as a consumer. The more expensive the labor, the pricier the product. The upshot being that, when their time has run out, they will have frittered their time away on skirmishes and intestinal strife, only to finish up marooned in the vicious circle of the exploited wage-slave […]
One cannot preach brotherhood and then be a splitter of hairs, a bearer of grudges, a moaner, a gangster, a slanderer or begrudger. One cannot claim to be enamoured of freedom and a fighter for emancipation and then dig in one’s heels and be overbearing in company, at meetings and in one’s social relations, and at home with one’s partner and children… a tyrant and inquisitor, not to say a wretched exploiter.22
Direct-action syndicalism and Salvador Seguí (painter and decorator, Barcelona):
[El Heraldo newspaper] But do other trade union leaders say the same? Or at any rate can they guarantee as much with the same determination with which you have answered me?
[Salvador Seguí] Yes, of course. They guarantee it too. At least they point out that becoming a deputy means giving up the leadership of the union. I cannot answer for them because they are old enough to answer for themselves.
Not that we hate Parliament: it is simply that we have woken up to the fact that the parliamentary system is utterly useless. It needs to be jettisoned as something there is no point in our bothering with. Take it from me! We have resolved this matter and turned our backs on the matter.
Yes, but the tactics you adopt in your organisation have no need of parliament’s assistance. [Seguí looks at me rather ironically, suggesting that the question should be put to him bluntly. This was no time to accede to the invitation. I carried on regardless.]
What are your tactics?
Very simple, actually. The organisations predating those presently in existence were not practical, or they were not entirely practical. The gains made on the worker’s behalf were so slow in coming and so insignificant as to make the creation of new organisations imperative. We school the worker to a climate of confidence in his own determination and his own endeavours. That everybody is sufficient unto himself when it comes to carrying out his mission as a human being. We simply teach them to struggle against all who may be their enemies. People believe that we are only out for an extra peseta a day and, perhaps, an hour off the working day. They are mistaken. We seek our emancipation as workers and thereby the destruction of the law of wages. Let everybody work, everybody, all of us equals! We enter the fray with the Unions, yes, and that is the reason why we have organised them appropriately.
The organising is admirable. We all know that by now. But the tactics, what are the tactics?
Well, each is the outworking of the other. Don’t go thinking that we prefer quantity over quality. At the outset what we were after was ten competent workers, worthwhile and alive to their duties and their rights, rather than ten thousand workers who might not be able to stand up to the harassment, the abuse, the hunger, imprisonment and the entire litany of dirty tricks deployed in efforts to intimidate us. For we knew that the example set by those ten would be enough to educate the masses in the pursuit of social improvement. So that it would be impossible to stand against us. Should that ten be rounded up, another ten will pop up and so on and so on until we number ten thousand. Terrifying and monstrous though it may be, high-handedness can never cope with such numbers. By looking out for quality alone we have achieved the numbers that have rocked governments and the bosses on their heels during the recent campaign in Catalonia. Many of the workers who came out on strike may well not have had a full grasp of the essential meaning of syndicalism. But hatred for the boss who exploits and niggles them, and the daily dose of high-handed treatment, as well as the example set by other workers—in terms of self-denial and disinterestedness—were enough. They knew just what needed doing should the strike carry on, and that did the trick.
Yes, Pestaña said the same thing only yesterday.
Well that’s all there is to it. We teach them how to look out for themselves. Do you think it takes long to get the hang of it? And once learned, do you think there is any need to take the worker from here and plant him down somewhere else and tell him: Now, rebel at five o’clock tomorrow morning, back down at seven and rebel again at nine and back down at twelve, only to rebel again at nine and back off yet again at twelve? No. That would be an impossibility. The social question boils down to this: learning how to do for oneself. We do not have anything great to give the worker, nor do we promise him a rose garden. Rose gardens are within his reach, just as they are within the reach of bourgeois avarice. Within and without, we are all equal, or maybe you doubt that on the grounds that the ransacking of a Bank today brings the proletariat no benefit. And that it is still subject to the boss’s exploitation the day after […]
The oppression of the majority, the strait-jacket of authority, the persistence of bullying, the gobbling-up of worthwhile things created by other people… As long as this endures, we have no option but to plump for unionisation that will assume various forms: violent forms, every time, if violence is imposed upon them. With agencies for resistance up and running, these may well, by themselves, be equal to the attack. This is the education we offer the working man: we see to it that he acquires the habits of cohesiveness and discipline, so that, when the time comes, all syndicalists act as one man. And it seems to me that in Catalonia we have pulled it off.23
The malaise among the masses, generated by their wretched, enslaved conditions, prompts them blindly to embrace ideas offered to them like drink to a thirsty man, like a balm, like an antidote to the world as it is. But do the masses look any further than that? Are they aware of how they might set themselves free? We say no. At best, they know that they should set themselves free, but this is not enough. What is needed is a clearer picture, a sharper picture of the order to be established and, if any attempt is to be made to carry out an overhaul as far reaching as the one we would like to come to life, at the very least the chief principles upon which justice rests need to be planted in the minds of the masses in order to conjure up a new consciousness. That is the sort of education we reckon should come before any decisive action.
If we pause for a moment to reflect upon what our revolution ought to be, we will see that it cannot follow any other course. We do not want the people mounting all this effort just to effect a change in overseer, but rather to shrug off all oversight. Which is why we mean to strengthen the individual by educating him. The herd instinct must be banished from humanity. Unless we turn our thoughts to that, we should not describe ourselves as libertarians because the freedom we crave cannot exist wherever there are those determined—if it can be called determination—to offer unthinking obedience to the orders of a minority.
We cannot say how long it will take to educate the people. In our view this depends on how much effort we put into it. However, we can say that, without such education, there can be no talk of genuine emancipation for them, and that arguments to the contrary are self-delusion or the deception of others!24
Anarchists inside