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 the trade unions. Work to be done.
What is it that those anarchists, who do not believe that organisation should be along state lines, want? They will say that they practice Anarchism so as to arrive at near perfection. Might it not be the case that the comrades back in ’68 and ’73, in their congresses and despite their sectarian practices, foresaw and understood that the economic side to Anarchism might be implemented immediately? I reckon the answer is yes.
Certain facets of the issues raised by Anarchism can be put into effect. Who but the workers were in a position to understand this new thinking? Who but the workers can carry out the overhaul?
But I doubt there is anybody who thinks he is watching the defeat of the bourgeois capitalist world’s economic values; that he is witnessing the collapse of phony old ideas that are likewise bourgeois and being replaced by values and ideas such as the issues that Anarchism poses in the round. Let us say, for we owe it to the truth, that we are moving towards the posing of some of the problems raised by anarchism.
Anarchists have a mission to perform within the unions, watching over their survival and orientation. By not neglecting trade union activity, their influence will grow; the organisation will be that much more libertarian and will trigger the advent of a new society that much sooner. Anarchists should act out their anarchist ideals within the trade unions. It is suicide for anarchists to hold aloof from trades organisations. Everything should and can be done within the Unions.
Which is not to say that they should dissolve the groups already in existence. No, not at all. On the contrary, these can amalgamate with the Unions. The greater the influence they wield, the more Anarchism and the more anarchists. These days, Anarchism is not the bogeyman it once was, and this is because of the persuasive work carried out. It was thanks to anarchist influence that, at the regional congress in Catalonia and at the national congress in 1918 and 1919, respectively, the trade union organisation embraced the emphatic statement that our sights are set on achieving libertarian communism, something that might well have been rejected in 1914 since anarchists kept their distance from the organisations then.
The Russian state. The role of the unions.
Production should be organised and regulated, not by the anarchist groups nor by state organizations, but by the unions.
We are not Leninists, in that we do not believe that the State, no matter how revolutionary and socialist it may purport to be, should have the usufruct of the means of production.
[We believe] that the only ones equipped for that are the Unions, because, for one thing, they are more moral. And for another, because they are more competent.
It is not the calling of the Russian State, no matter how essentially socialist it may be, to distribute production. That would be like getting folk to believe in some supernatural agent. In Germany we have already seen a number of failures under a socialist State. And even though the situation there is not the same as in Russia, the State has proven itself markedly incompetent.25
Ángel Pestaña (watch-maker) was equally blunt:
Of all the issues raised in the Unions, this one, relating to officials or persons paid for handling administrative and secretarial business, may well be the one that provokes the gravest and most serious difficulties […] Experiences elsewhere should caution us against using our hard-saved pennies on the upkeep of the harmful beast that would devour us: the bureaucrat.
How are we to get around this snag and break out of the vicious cycle in which necessity has us trapped? By switching away from the approach used in other countries. Elsewhere, the permanent official is still the general secretary of the Union who is in charge of the organisation and of leading it, until he turns into a bit of a lordling imposed on the Union.
The approach we should take, since we cannot get by without standing officials, is to ensure that the latter are mere employees, in the strictest sense of the term. They would have no vote and no voice at committee meetings and would attend those in order to take the minutes, offering an opinion only if asked. A functionary… a functionary and nothing more.
The general secretary, like the treasurer and like all the members of the committee, must work for a living and report to the workshop every day, lest they lose touch with the workers. They must also show that they are not living off the union dues. If anyone is to be paid out of those dues, it should not be the committee proper, and some comrade employed out of the union’s necessity, but one who has no say in the union’s decision-making.
This should apply also to the Local Federation and Regional Confederation.
This policy is harder to apply to the National Confederation. But on the other hand, the general secretaryship should be renewed at each congress, with the incumbent prohibited from being re-elected for more than two consecutive terms—although alternate terms may be acceptable. The danger here is much reduced, and anything representing a help in averting or reducing it—should it not prove possible to banish it altogether—should be welcomed.26
The Sindicato único
This is one of the most interesting issues raised by the congress, which recognized the enormous implications, and two whole sittings were set aside for its discussion and approval. The unanimity by which the resolution was carried is clear proof of the proletariat’s yearning for change, in respect to organisational matters related to workers’ associations. It was an oddity that groups of workers, drawn not from a similar sector or industry, but from a given trade or profession, should have launched two, three or more unions for that trade or profession within the same locality. The drawbacks to such organisational arrangements were exposed time and time again when those bodies were defeated by the bourgeoisie, and on other occasions when, without quite failing, the success of our struggle was compromised for the want of unity
