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In the first part of his study, the authortraces with precision the degeneration,the successive capitulations of the anar-chist leaders of the CNT-FAI. However,perhaps he does not penetrate to theheart of the problem with sufficient con-viction. To be precise, was traditional an-archism, idealistic and prone to splits, notdestined to fail as soon as it found itself confronted by an implacable social strug-gle, for which it was not in the least wayprepared?Because it was not mainly infidelity toprinciples, human weakness, inexperi-ence or naivety among the leaders, whichled them astray, but rather it was a con-genital incapacity to evade the traps of the rulers(which they put up with sincethey weren't able to write them off witha stroke of a pen). As a consequence theywere destined to get bogged down inministerialism, to take shelter under thetreacherous wing of 'antifascist' bourgeoisdemocracy and finally to let themselvesbe dragged along by the stalinist coun-ter-revolution.On the other hand, they were damnedwell prepared for economic self-manage-ment of agriculture, and to a lesser ex-tent, industry. These, together with lib-ertarian collectivisation remain a modelfor future revolution and saved the hon-our of anarchism. One might express re-gret that Fontenis'study is only able toskim the surface of this glorious episodeof the Spanish revolu-tion. He would surelybe justified in retort-ing that it is no lessabsent from the writings which he analy-ses.The merit of these texts lies elsewhere,in the political domain. They reveal anunjustifiably obscure aspect of the Ibe-rian libertarian avant-garde, the brief rise of the 'Friends of Durruti', named inmemory of the legendary Durruti, whofell on the front on the 20th of November1936. They emerged from the lessonsdrawn, a little late, from the cruel defeatof May 1937 in Barcelona. Just as inFrance Babouvism was the delayed fruitof the severe repressions of germinal andprairial[*1] 1795, the lucidity of these lib-ertarian communists was inspired by thetragedy of May in Catalonia.Throughout the few editions of theirshort-lived paper, 'The friend of the peo-ple' which Fontenis has passionatly scru-tinised and translated, we see these mili-tants refusing, as was advocated by thereformist anarchists as much as by thestalinists, to wait until the war has beenwon to carry out the revolution and af-firming that one couldn't be dissociatedfrom the other. They proclaim that it ispossible to battle against the fascist en-emy without in the least renouncing lib-ertarian ideals. They denounce the as-phyxiation engendered by the machineryof state. And finally they affirm that with-out a revolutionnary theory, revolutionscannot come from below, and that therevolution of 19 July 1936 failed for wantof a program derived from such a theory.Georges Fontenis, in his efforts to real-ise such a libertarion communist pro-gram, wrote this in 1954 in France andupdated it in July 1971 at Marseille atthe constituitive congress of the Organi-sation Communiste Libertaire (OCL),which I took part in. I will finish by speci-fying that, today, I find myself at his sidesin the UTCL (Union des TraivailleursCommunistes Liberataires), which setsitself in the tradition bequeathed by thefirst international, that is to say anti-au-thoritarian.
Preface to the 1st edition (1983) by Daniel Guerin
George Fontenis' study seems useful to me, indeed Iwould go so far as to say it is valuable, not only as itteaches a better understanding of the SpanishRevolution of 1936-7 but it also provides a moreextensive interpretation of the notion of libertariancommunism itself.
When using this phrase 'libertarian communism' it is certainlyworthwhile to clearly distinguish it from two other versionswhich are endowed with the same name. To be specific; firstlythe utopia, propagated by Kropotkin and his disciples, of a ter-restrial paradise without money where, thanks to the abundanceof resources, each and every person would be able to draw freelyfrom the stockpile. Secondly the infantile idyll of a jumble of 'free communes', at the heart of the Spanish CNT before 1936,which arose from the thinking of Isaac Puente. This soft dreamleft Spanish anarcho-syndicalism extremely ill-prepared for theharsh realities of revolution and civil war on the eve of Franco'sputsch. Fontenis, although he does highlight certain positiveaspects of the congress of Saragossa of 1936, seems to me to erron the side of those who appear removed from reality.
A PDF booklet from the Struggle site
www.struggle.ws
The revolutionary messageof the 'Friends of Durruti'
English translation 1999/2000 by Chekov Feeney from the French text and translations by George Fontenis. This PDF version May 2003
[*1] 7th and 8th months of the Frence revolutionarycalender. March 22 - April 20 & April 21 - May 20
 
INTRODUCTIONBarcelona, May 1937. The first issue of 'The People's Friend', the organ of theFriends of Durruti, appeared. The policerepression of the Republican state had just crashed against the fighters of thebarricades who had responded to thestalinist provocations by retaking theroad of revolution. But while thecombattants of the revolution were tak-ing the fight to the forces of repression of the Catalan Generalitat and of the cen-tral state, the anarchist 'leaders' of theCNT-FAI, having become ministers of thebourgeois government, asked the victorsof the barricades to lay down their arms,to have faith in their 'leaders' to settlethe conflict and to reunite the anti-Francoforces. The result wasn't long in coming:thousands of the barricade fighters foundthemselves in prison, and the censorshipof the press became more brutal thanever. The first issue of 'Friend of the Peo-ple' was ferociously censored. But at lastit appeared and went on to try to be therallying point for all those who, whilestruggling against Franco, didn't want toforget the tasks of the revolution. Pre-cisely those tasks which gave meaningto the war against the military and theirallies.The 'Friends of Durruti', and more gen-erally the Spanish libertarian workers,were to fail. Why? and what really wastheir battle?After almost half a century since theseevents, nothing of substance has yet ap-peared in response to these questions.The leaders of the 'official' anarchistmovement, still preoccuppied with hid-ing the weaknesses and the inconsisten-cies, blurring the responsibility, avoidingthe fundamental theoretical problems,avoid discussion or are satisfied with afew reluctant confessions and regrets.But we still await a profound auto-criti-cism, a rigorous analysis of the events.Everything has been done to extinguishthe most radical critiques, in particularthose of the 'Friends of Durruti', and totry to write them out of history.However they, the 'Friends of Durruti',have supplied more than an outline of such a vigorous analysis and they did itin the heart of the battle itself.This is why it seems to us to be indispen-sable to publish their principal writings,still unpublished in France. To contrib-ute to the debate which we wish to clarify,we add here a brief study of the evolu-tion of the libertarian movement and of the Spanish revolution and also,neccessarily, the commentaries that thetexts and the facts inspire in the com-rades who pursue the struggle for liber-tarian communism today.Having said that, our work is not a his-tory of the Spanish revolution which, inour eyes, remains to be written. We havefurthermore deliberately left aside theimmense episode of economic and socialachievements, collectivisations andsocialisations, except insofar as they im-pinge upon our study. These are well cov-ered by the works of Gaston Leval andFrank Mintz. We have only attempted toexamine, from a revolutionary point of view, the period from Spring to Summer1937. A period which we believe was de-cisive.It is absolutely necessary - the Friendsof Durruti tried to point out - to find apath which allows revolutionaries, with-out compromising and without fallinginto an unprincipled anti-fascist front, tohave a practical strategy of strugglewhich unifies the proletarian forcesagainst the violent blows of the reaction,militarism and fascism. One understandswhy the Friends of Durruti, should havegiven such importance to the so-calledchoice 'war or revolution'But, before addressing the events andtheir analysis, we must lay out, as brieflyas possible, the composition of the forcespresent on the "antifascist" side, in orderto assist the journey of the non expertreader across what one author has called
Introduction to the writings of theFriends of DurrutiThe anti-fascist camp in theSpanish revolution
the "Spanish Labyrinth". The bibliogra-phy which we give will allow one to findfuller information.SPAIN AND CATALONIAThe pressure of regional autonomies inSpain, whose unity was imposed by thecentral government, goes back far. It car-ries on today, on the institutional level(There exists in various regions, admin-istrations which enjoy limited autonomy),or as subversive action (which is the casein the Basque country). In the 1930's itbarely existed outside two regions whichwere otherwise the most economicallydeveloped, Catalonia and the Basquecountry. The Republic had granted themtheir own institutions. In Catalonia, aregion which was to be in the forefront of the revolution, there was a regionalpower: the government of theGeneralidad of Catalonia, a regional par-liament, and forces of public order: theguards of the Generalidad (Mozos deescuadra). The parties and organisationsoften had a singular composition here, aswe shall see.THE CATALAN PARTIESIn Catalonia there existed organisationswithout any institutional or historic linkswith the parties and groups which werefound throughout the rest of Spain. Wemention the most important.-The "Catalan Left" (La Esquarracatalana) controlled the Generalidad. Itwas a party of workers, intellectuals, butmostly elements of the "left-wing" petiteBourgeois. It was the party of Companys,the president of the Generalidad.-The union of rabassaires (sharecrop-pers, agricultural small holders) was of a similar leaning.-The party of the Catalan state (l'EstatCatala) was openly separatist, its nation-alism leaned towards fascism.THE FEDERALIST REPUBLICANSThe federalist spirit appeared in Spainduring the 19th century, as a strong cur-rent within Republicanism. A certainnumber of these Republicans saw them-selves as being very close to the federal-ist ideas of the anti-authoritarian wingof the 1st International. The federalistRepublicans recruited mainly from theliberal petite bourgeoisie and in certainpeasant circles.In 1936, in the Madrid parliament (theCortes), there was an astonishing parlia-mentary extreme left. It was made up of federalist republicans. There was amongthem, notably, lawyers who defendedanarchist and anarcho-syndicalist activ-ists in court.These liberals didn't at all want to over-turn the basis of bourgeois society butthey had radical rhetoric, reasonablyclose to the declarations of the revolution-aries. The CNT treated them delicatelyand even supported them, despite it be-ing anti-parliament.THE LEFT AND THE EXTREMELEFTThe socialist party (Socialist WorkersParty of Spain) was a reformist party,composed mainly of petite bourgeois in-tellectuals and bureaucrats. However, itcontained a working class base groupedin a union organisation, the General Un-ion of Workers (UGT) in so far as thepaths of the party and the unions wereinterlinked. A good example: the social-ist leader Largo Caballero, who was tobe, for a long time, a pure reformist andrepressive minister - was secretary gen-
 
the mission of combating every reform-ist tendency. The conflict escalated when,in 1927, the anarchist groups, until thenweakly tied together in a very loose fed-eration, formed the famous FAI (Federa-tion of Iberian anarchists) along withsome Portuguese groups. We now arriveat the problem of relations between themass organisation and the organisationof the avant-garde. Even though the re-lations between the FAI and the CNTweren't relations of straightforwarddomination, you could find militant an-archists who were opposed to the FAI andwho condemned "the FAI dictatorship".In fact while a certain number of the CNTofficers were members of the FAI, prop-erly speaking this didn't amount to a dic-tatorship, rather a dominant ideologicalinfluence. The conflict reached a head in1931, at the CNT congress held in Ma-drid. It set the activists who proposed arealistic analysis and very consideredapproach against those activists whowanted to launch the revolutionary up-risings immediately. The former drew upa manifesto, receiving 30 signatures (theywere called the "Trente" and their ten-dency was called "Trentisme"). In themanifesto they denounced the superficialanalysis, the simplistic and catastrophicconception of revolution, the cult of vio-lence for its own sake, which seemed tothem to be characteristic of the militantsof the FAI[*1]. Certainly, it was far frombeing true that all the members of theFAI were hooligans. However, it is truethat adventurist revolutionary attemptshad been attempted and were to be at-tempted in the period that followed, atthe instigation, or with the support of some groups of the FAI. These attemptswere doomed to failure and resulted infierce repression. To cut a long storyshort, the "trentistes" who called them-selves prudent, but not any less revolu-tionary for this, counted in their numbersome activists who were incontestablyinclined towards reformism. One of theirleaders, Angel Pestana went on to foundthe "Syndicalist party" and would becomea deputy in the Cortes.The activists and the unions which ral-lied to the ‘Manifesto of the Thirty’ wereexpelled from the Confederation andconstituted the "unions of opposi-tion". Their influence in some re-gions was far from negligible. Somuch so that they were re-admittedinto the CNT five years later at thecongress of Zaragozza.We will soon see ministers whoseorigin was "trentiste" and even mili-tants of the FAI or intransigentswho had battled against "Trentism",like Garcia Oliver and FedericalMontseny, in the Madrid centralgovernment and that of theGeneralidad of Catalonia, in Barce-lona. Also in September 1937,Pestana joined the CNT.[*2]If we want to give a brief but relativelycomplete overview of the currents whichwere present in the Spanish libertarianmovement, we can distinguish:- a small revisionist "fringe" whichended up in the syndicalist partyalongside Pestana.- a "trentist" current, which saw itself as revolutionary but realistic which in-cluded a certain Juan Peiro. It hadfought for the creation of Federationsof industries in the CNT and had de-nounced the adventurist practices of some groups of the FAI.- a traditionalist component consist-ing of many union officers who didn'talways see the utility of a specific or-ganisation bringing together anarchistgroups (sometimes they even com-bated its existence). These militantsconsidered themselves anarchist butfor them anarchist groups should sim-ply be centres of thought and generalpropaganda. This point of view is cur-rently very popular among anarcho-syndicalists[3*].Consequently, it was far from being thecase that the FAI included all the anar-chists for whom the trade-union wasn'tthe answer to all the problems. Further-more one must distinguish the workingclass FAI-ists, primarily anarcho-syndicalists like Garcia Oliver andDurruti, from the anarchists from intel-lectual backgrounds like FedericaMontseny.The Libertarian youth who defended thepurity of the "acrate"[4*] ideal and playeda large part in the cultural and educa-tional fields especially in Catalonia. Onthis point it should be stated that theSpanish libertarian movement in its en-tirety was very concerned with spread-ing literacy and education(from whichcame the creation of numerous modernschools, inspired by the teachings of Fracisco Ferrer, and the proliferation of "atheneums" a kind of popular universitywhich were very active).The "Friends of Durruti", all members of eral of the UGT. The leaders of theUGT openly fought the syndicalistsof the CNT, however there was,among the rank and file, in manycircumstances, a desire for unity of the working class.The communists were divided andfew, their Stalinism was excessive.Their influence grew quickly duringthe revolution. We shall see why. InCatalonia, the Stalinist party took the name of PSUC, United Social-ist Party of Catalonia, born from thefusion of the small communist partyand a socialist Catalan party.The Trotskyists made up only a fewgroups whose activity was primarily inthe field of theory. Their best known mili-tant Andreas Nin, joined the POUM. Itis incorrect to see this 'Workers Party of Marxist Unity' as being Trotskyist. Itwas, from 1935 on, the guise of the block of communists, essentially Catalan work-ers and peasants, who had broken withMoscow. It was a party which exerciseda certain influence, notably in Barcelona,but it was ceaselessly buffeted betweensupport for the Catalan nationalists andinternationalism, between electoralismand the fact that a certain number of itsmembers were in the CNT, between thedenunciations of the rulers in Moscowand its proclaimed admiration for Stalin'sregime. In Trotskyist jargon, it was a"Centrist" workers party.THE LIBERTARIAN MOVEMENTLet's pass on now to the National Con-federation of Labour. Without going intothe details of its history we have to fur-ther elaborate on this CNT of which the"Friends of Durruti" were members.It was founded in 1910, by the workersand libertarian groups which had per-sisted as inheritors of the Spanish fed-eration of the 1st international. It wasinspired by French revolutionary syndi-calism, thus at its inception it adoptedthe form of organisation and struggle of the trade union, but it defined its finalobjective as being anarchist communism.It saw the union as the fundamentalstructure towards the realisation of thisgoal . It was a mass anarcho-syndicalistorganisation whose membership cameclose to 1 million in 1936.Its history is extremely complex, havingpassed through numerous conflicts. Itcontained two fundamental currentswhich were often opposed. One waspurely anarcho-syndicalist and consid-ered that the CNT was the only organi-sation needed and regarded the existenceof organised anarchist groups, outside theCNT, as superfluous or even troubling.On the other side was the current, in-spired by the activists, which saw them-selves as being primarily revolutionaryanarchists and only then members of asyndicalist confederation where they had
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