by most bourgeois.
Another target for criticism was marxism (of the Leninist variety), its theory and practice within the USSR, which were depicted as what they were: the new ideology of the exploiter classes, a cloak donned so that they might continue their rule over the workers. The lessons of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus, Rocker and Nettlau were published in book and pamphlet format. And there were lots of books and pamphlets examining marxism from the theoretical viewpoint (Bakunin, Kropotkin, Cafiero and Rocker) as well as from the practical, including the writings of Russian anarchists (Yartchuk, Gorelik, Voline, Arshinov, Makhno) and those of a number of cenetistas who had been to Russia (people such as Pestaña, Pérez Combina, Martín Gudell and Horacio Prieto). Not to mention propaganda arriving from Latin America (Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay), relations with which were very close indeed.
However, the CNT fell well short of flawlessness: hence the notion of the sham pyramid.
In hierarchical systems, power and the ruling class sit at the top and the exploited majority make up the base. The whole set-up might be represented as a pyramid, a battery of orders emanating from the top down.
But what has this to do with the CNT, which, in theory, adopted a more horizontal arrangement?
Some things in history represent anomalies: the creation of the FAI, anticipating the provisions of the Arshinov Platform, i.e. control of the trade union by an outside, foreign body (See Appendix IV below), the flirtations with alliances in the 1920s and the damaging controversy between faístas and treintistas. A few remarks about the latter should help explain the two preceding ones.
Certain cenetistas had their suspicions as to unspoken horse-trading going on between a group accused of reformism (Peiró and Pestaña and the so-called treintistas) and the republicans. The FAI became the home of attacks on reformism. In actual fact, a third tendency emerged, a group made up of Durruti, Ascaso, García Oliver, etc., who craved social revolution and cashed in on the popularity of the FAI whilst setting up a group that was answerable to nobody.
In what way was this falling-out any different than the falling-out between Trotskyists and Stalinists at around the same time?
The pro-Stalin Leninists or the pro-Trotsky faction who were in the gulags with the Italian-Croatian former-Trotskyist Antón Ciliga, fell out over matters relating to tactics and moves designed to seize control of the levers of the organisation, manipulating meetings and congresses as if the rank and file workers—whom they all purported to represent and lead—were brainless and incapable of articulating their opinions.38
Inside the CNT, the opinions of all the membership were actually sounded.
The tactics of attempted revolution, heralded by numerous spontaneous ventures spearheaded by the rank and file (see Appendix II below) demonstrated that some of the membership was in step with the FAI, but that there were serious and highly damnable shortcomings when it came to laying the groundwork for attack.
In fact, the Spanish left could not bring itself to introduce the social and economic changes the country so sorely needed, even from the point of view of a forward-looking capitalism, if only for straightforward surgical reasons and out of the merest regard for the lives of the majority of the population. The workers, hungry for immediate, real and definitive socio-economic changes could not understand the snail’s pace. The masses craved change and yearned for social revolution.
At the grassroots level in Asturias in 1934, a formal alliance had been brokered, as we have seen, between the UGT and the CNT. And out of a socialist-organised uprising there spontaneously emerged a workers’ alliance, under the UHP. To all workers, the UHP became a synonym for immediate revolutionary social change.
All of this ensured that the insults and mutual abuse swapped between the cenetista bigwigs (well-ensconced leaders barely—or not at all—answerable to the rank and file) were outweighed by the mutual reconciliation that culminated at the Zaragoza congress of May 1936. But the gulf between the rank and file membership and the leadership was not tackled, no more than by rotation of offices, which was not so much part of CNT practice as a response to police action when the unions were forced to fill vacancies created by the arrest of comrades.
In reality, within the CNT there were two lines on revolution and libertarian communism (see Appendix V below): that of the bigwigs who sought a revolution from above on a date of their own choosing, and that of the grassroots members out for immediate direct action designed to trigger a thoroughgoing social change in the workplace, in the barrio or at village level.
From the stances adopted in 1936–1939 and in 1944–1948, we may infer that the bigwigs believed in the value of alliance with some of the bourgeoisie—and later, even with the monarchy—as a means of directing and bolstering the CNT. This was utter nonsense, as would have been obvious had they actually explored writings and experiences of Bakunin, Kropotkin and anarchists who had emigrated from the USSR. This was all the more nonsensical when they had themselves witnessed the treachery of German socialists and like-minded trade unionists, calculated to eradicate revolutionary workers (Spartakists and direct actionists), and were aware of US intervention in its Central American backyard.
The CNT bigwigs emblazoned a superficial anarcho-syndicalism and anarchism (see Appendices VI, IV and V), which explains how they could so glibly and lastingly enter the governments of Catalonia and Spain (respectively, September 1936–May 1937 and November 1936–May 1937, and again from April 1938 until March 1939).
It is telling that there has been no analysis of the CNT’s collaboration in government between 1936 and 1939, not in exile (pending a congress within Spain) nor within the Peninsula (driven by the need to organise first and foremost and to head off controversy), for which reason the polemics endure, and theoretical confusion persists. This is why it is important to know the actual numbers of militants on the payroll of the Organisation. As Pestaña has it:
The claim in public that we are against paid officials, and the private understanding that in the day to day running of the organisation we have them, strikes me as an act of hypocrisy out of place in our group where we are forever claiming full responsibility for our actions.
Officially, we have no paid officials today, but the editors of Solidaridad Obrera are paid.39 Off the record, under the table, so to speak, there are two paid and permanent posts on the National Committee; one or two—more often two than one—on the Regional Committee of Catalonia; two paid posts within the Barcelona Local Federation; and a number of Barcelona unions, some of which also have two or three paid officials. But let us repeat that this is off the record and such payments are justified by invoking the tasks they perform.
Not that the Catalan organisation is alone in having paid officials: the practice applies to virtually every region of Spain.40
Having thirty-odd paid officials out of a membership of about 550,000 and a catchment area twice that size is a trifling matter in terms of material benefits, but it is huge in terms of influence and the exercise of power over the rest.
That situation was flying in the face of the 1919 congress, which had decided that only the general secretary would be paid (approximately the wage of a skilled worker). But the “non-remuneration policy operated a selection of leaders among the most dedicated, men who owned nothing and remained entrenched in their refus de parvenir”.41 With the upshot that most of the CNT officials carried out their trade union duties after the day’s work was done and sometimes had to lay out money for the travel essential to keeping in touch.
Another
