The Spanish Anarchists THE HEROIC YEARS 1868-1936 Murray Bookchin HARPER COLOPHON BOOKS Harper & Row, Publishers [New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, LondonChapter Eleven: Concluding Remarks ‘We must leave the details of that revolution—its astonishing ac- hievements and its tragic subversion—to another vol jurjo was to perish in a plane crash on his way Franco commander of the entie military uprising; peninsula was to become inextricably tied to Euro that Spain was to endure three tormenting contfict—all of these events belong to the conventional histories ofthe thout entering into a discussion at this time of and the experiments in workers’ control of half of 1936, we must try to assess the meaning ofthe the place of the Spanish A: proletarian socialism? What ‘possibilities —and its Himits? Are the organizational forms developed by the CNT and FAI relevant to sments in our own time? Today, long after the Spanish ovement was destroyed by Franco, these beguiling ques- ‘on. The movement still haunts us—not only as a noble ‘perhaps a tragic memory, but as a fascinating test of iber- tarian theory and practice. ‘Although Spanish Anarchism was virtually unknown abroad during the “heroi ‘of its developmen argued in all earnestness th ing and, inthe curious dialect of the century-iong history of pro ‘ The emergence of the working class, specifically of the Parisian proletariat, as.a revolutionary force on the June barricades of 1848 had fotally changed the landscape of earlier radical theory. Until that event, critical views of society had been shaped by the notion of a broad populist conflict between an entrenched minority of oppressors ‘and a dominated mass of oppressed. Radicals generally conceived of these polarized segments of society in very il-cefined terms. Under the rubric of the “people” (le peuple), they fashioned a broad constit= 302 — Coneluting Romer 308, |, financial, and united more by ic community of Everyone in society was “free” freedom” to own property withoutConcluding Remarks of a fair exchange of labor power for ee che workers to capital as an ‘wages concealed the enslavement inevitable process." a. The “tee market” also made inevitable the radicalization of ongoing competition between “fee entreprencirs/ se, Eventual thet would be diver the notion ths he high-minded teal. bury histore rol tothe poll ution. Marx gave no credence to revolt under the impulse of ‘writers ascribe this revolt itis not Contrary. Since the abstraction of Sri gine theoretical con ie sguisable, at School fa. ‘hen the whe stn atthe moment estes a its i rsh and what consequent on that ey aoe “Accordingly, socialism becomes “scientific” and develops asa eeause its composed of mary faction t0 the ts who had been removed from the wich the fe compelled to do," not Troreover imparted hs revo Say inthe “fll-grown’ proletariat of od- ey Peinaye increasing in number, and displ ‘united, organized by production itself.” Ps Concluding Remaris Pe ‘mass and to demonstrate that beliefs such as “liberty” and “equality” could not be divorced from the material conditions of social life. Yet within this very process of demystification, Marxism gener- of highly misleading myths which were to show the united, and organized by the process of capitalist production,” craftsmen, home-workers, nondescript laborers of every ters, unemployed urban and rural poor, even tav rs, and prostitutes—in shor, the flotsam and jetsam of Fr. ety which the ruling classes had habitually designated as canalle. ‘These very same elements, nearly a quarter ofa century later, were 10 rman the barricades of the Paris Commune. It was precisely the indus- trialization of France Summoned Europe to revolution during the nineteenth century. In- deed, much the same could be said of the Russian proletariat of 1917, ted from the countryside that it was anything but a forking lass ‘The great proletarian insurrections that seemed to lend such com- pelling support the tense, almost electrifying fore Proletarian socialism became a revolutionary tury not because 2 well-organized, consolida letariat had emerged with the factory system bu e very process of proletarianization, Dispossessed rural people and craltsmen, ‘were being removed from a disintegrating preindustrial way of life and plunged i shop as such nor the factory as such predisposed them kind of social action; rather, former and the shock celona CNT. ‘The very “half-grown’ quality of the early proletari class that knew no other world but the industrial one. For this class,