"But now a still greater problem faces us. They will work eight-ten-twelve-or more hours per day, if need be, in order to intensify production and reconstruct, as quickly as possible all that has been destroyed by the war.
It shall not be! It is necessary for us to understand the manner in which the military putsch of July 19th was brought about and the impossibility of the events being foreseen. One that does not wreak havoc on the environment in pursuit of profits, one where police no longer murder people of color to preserve white supremacy, one free of the exploitation of people’s labor, and free of misogynist violence, a society where the people affected by political decisions are the ones making those decisions. . On Jan., 31st, speaking at Serinena, Federica Montseny said that in these tragic times, we must put aside our point of view, our ideological conditions in order to realise the unity of all anti-fascists from the Republicans to the Anarchists.
If they participate to-day in the Government of Spain, they do so to meet the imperative necessity of taking part in the direction of the war of defence, which the Spanish people are compelled to wage. Despite this, the manoeuvres against the revolutionary spirit of the C.N.T. As Jia Tolentino observed in “The New Yorker”: “Informal child-care collectives, transgender support groups, and other ad-hoc organizations operate without the top-down leadership or philanthropic funding that most charities depend on.
The separation of the U.G.T. Green fascism is authoritarian, nationalist, militaristic and is collectivist in nature, strongly against working class power and individual autonomy.
Let them do what they may, They shall not pass! In 1922 the syndicalists set up their own International with its headquarters in Berlin, taking the historic name of the International Workingmen’s Association. In the bitter struggle at the door of Madrid, the unity of the workers of the U.G.T. In Portland, Oregon, people have been in the streets protesting in support of Black lives and against the police for over one hundred consecutive days, only taking a short break during the forest fires. It would seem that they do not look with favour on the idea that the workers united can be the bearers of the regenerating ideas that are to redeem Spain.
They were particularly active in the bourses du travail (“labour exchanges”), local groups of unions originally established to find work for their members. Federica Montseny writes in Tierra Y Libertad: "In Spain the Anarchists will not be treated as they are in Russia. " We have machine-guns rifles and cannons. Not a civil war like those of the past, where the forces were equal; but a modern war in which we were the worst equipped, etc. In Cataluña, for instance, there is not the slightest chance left to re-establish private property, because all archives and property-titles have been burnt, and all proprietors who have not lost their lives have left their property in the hands of the workers' organisations. "I wish to say that we Anarchists have never changed our position. [Home] Paul Messersmith-Glavin is a longtime anarchist organizer and a member of the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) and Perspectives on Anarchist Theory journal collective (follow him on Twitter @PaulMessersmit4). We must declare our point of view so that the other organisations, will know what to expect. "After the Russian Revolution a strong movement of the masses developed in Spain, which is the best reply to fascism.
"And so in obedience to circumstances we entered the central government and the generalidad. This is the moral and physical principle which we Anarchists put into practice in Spain. and C.N.T.
How did we manage to overcome so many serious difficulties in such a cruel and unequal struggle? Our constancy, same might call it our madness, was necessary to wear down the oppressive forces of the old democracy which, in Spain, was a hundred years behind the times.
The anarcho-syndicalists argued that the traditional function of trade unions—to struggle for better wages and working conditions—was not enough. I do not pretend to censor these Anarchists. "We have already spoken of what we want, once the war is ended. Between 1890 and 1901 several such symbolic murders were carried out; the victims included King Umberto I of Italy, the empress consort Elizabeth of Austria, President Sadi Carnot of France, President William McKinley of the United States, and Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, the prime minister of Spain. When it was established, the organizations that formed it could still boast a considerable following. This form of economic construction is one of the fundamentals of our fight against Fascism. Forced by circumstances and against my own will, I had to leave the factory where I was working to become the General Secretary of the Defence of Cataluña. But we here in Cataluña, have done practical work, we have participated in everything, we are everywhere. These mutual aid networks and small structures provide an ameliorative infrastructure to the nightly context of protest, but they also provide a coherent thing for a participant to do, outside of the nominally vague goal of simply protesting.” Pop-up clinics have been organized to provide for protestors’ aftercare, to help with the physical and emotional effects of blunt force trauma and exposure to the chemical warfare used by police. We are ready to fight, to construct, to realise the demands of the people. Very soon we will give to the world the example of a free land, that stood up without arms opposed, as a single man, to fascism, to the mentality of capitalism. Against imperialism, against arrogance and tyranny. Therefore the most capable comrades must devote their work to the development of the Revolution.
-GENERALITAT DE CATALUNYA-2/2/37. Spain Is the first and only nation to face up to fascism squarely and to throw herself into a revolution that is genuinely Spanish, completely original, and having no relation with the Russian Revolution or the recent uprisings in Austria. Thus we have brought about a Revolution in Spain.
Only in the regions around the coast has there been material progress, as a result of their contact with the outside world: and what autonomy they did have was due to their distance from Madrid. In Britain, the influence of syndicalism was shown most clearly in the Guild Socialism movement, which flourished briefly in the early years of the 20th century. Since anarchism’s reemergence in the 1990s, when anarchist organizing principles were used to shut down the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle, anarchism has permeated contemporary oppositional movements. An ideal which becomes stagnant, which has no flexibility, which has no adjustibility, which cannot react and whose representatives cannot respond in accordance with circumstances such an ideal is destined to be set apart. In England, the Irish poet and dramatist Oscar Wilde declared himself an anarchist and, under Kropotkin’s inspiration, wrote the essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” (1891). And, lastly, we anarchists who have created the ideal and the conception of the individual from the social cell that is man, are federalists. We must look for the platform, for the point of contact which will permit us with the greatest amount of freedom, and with a minimum plan of economical realisation to continue on our road until we reach the goal. The workers will be prepared to sacrifice all for the triumph of the revolution. But at Madrid, viewing the panorama of destruction by the enemies of the Spanish capital, the anti-fascist militia are demonstrating to the world that the Spanish people will triumph over fascism. I greet you all, and assure you that I shall always be on your side. In the freely federated autonomous regions there will be ample opportunity to employ their initiative and capabilities on their native soil. There is no longer any question of reconstructing Spain, after the civil war, on a basis of private property. This action of the workers constitutes, perhaps one of the greatest events of the past years. The people themselves, and only the people, determine the rhythm of our fight. They are afraid of the solidarity of the proletariat which displaces the political theories of: "In division there is strength.". Like anarchism, revolutionary syndicalism proved attractive to certain intellectuals, notably Georges Sorel, whose Reflections on Violence (1908) was the most important literary work to emerge from the movement. It defined a division of outlook that still lingers in anarchist circles, which have always included individualist attitudes too extreme to admit any kind of large-scale organization. Until now Spain has been a country with an enormous, richly adorned head-Madrid.
All this will demand an intense organisation of production under responsible and efficient administration.
Nevertheless, the anarcho-syndicalists acquired great prestige among the workers of France—and later of Spain and Italy—because of their generally tough-minded attitude at a time when working conditions were bad and employers tended to respond brutally to union activity.
For instance, no one could have foreseen that we would have simultaneously revolution and war. If they had been here we would have seen how they reacted before the events which have occurred and before realities, very different from anything we ever dreamed of. The anarcho-syndicalists’ strategy called for sustaining militancy by creating an atmosphere of incessant conflict, which would culminate in a massive general strike.